The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker
by Zettel
Summary: A story sequence: 'A moving x-ray image' of Sarah Walker's head and heart as they are formed and reformed. Book One: Sarah vs. the Spy Life (pre-Burbank: complete); Book Two: Sarah vs. Sarah (Burbank: complete); Epilogue: Sarah vs. the Emptiness (post-finale: complete).
1. Okay to Good?

**A/N1** Here's something a bit different from me. Not claiming originality for it, just noting that it is something I have not done before.

The idea had been languishing in notebooks, in the form of a title, chapter titles, and partial sketches. While I was in Germany, I found myself with some rainy-day time on my hands and this one of the things I wrote as the rain fell.

This begins a _story_ , in one sense, a _meditation_ , you might say, in another. It is a series of 'chapters', some short stories, others longer, involving some experiments with form or content, but each and all telling the story of the _(mis)education_ of Sarah Walker. Think of the stories as _a story sequence_. Most will be in temporal order (with gaps). Some will be pre-canon, some post-canon, others canon or inserted into various nooks and crannies in canon. (A Table of Contents is available in my profile.)

These 'chapters' are not meant merely as one-offs but are collectively to _add up to something_ , to create 'a moving X-ray image', as it were, of Sarah's head and heart as they are formed and reformed. Occasionally (not this time, however), the 'chapters' may be followed by a short remark.

My title is a nod to the famous book by Henry Adams, and to the classic Lauryn Hill album.

Don't own _Chuck_. And so we begin...more or less quietly.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

 **Book One: Sarah vs. the Spy Life**

* * *

CHAPTER ONE

 _From Okay to Good?_

* * *

Driving her car in the San Diego sunshine, Jenny Burton felt okay. Her day at the high school had been like lots of others: mostly lonely, with a few nasty, brutish moments, but luckily, they had been short. She did not fight back, and she did not react strongly, and so her tormentors, chiefly Dick-Dick (she always thought of him as Double Dick) and Heather Chandler, usually bored of teasing her after a few minutes.

Enduring the teasing was strange since so much of what was said was predicated on the idea that Jenny was naive, clueless and helpless. But that was wrong. Jenny had been her father's right hand in con after con. True, for many years, her father's right hand had not realized what his left hand was doing. She had thought it was a game: one she and her father were good at while others were not, but she did not really understand that what they were doing was legally and morally _wrong_. It was just what they did; it was their way of having adventures together.

But at a certain point, younger, really, than she liked to admit, she had an inkling of what was happening, of what they were actually doing, and the inkling quickly turned into a full-on certainty. But the passing of her ignorance did not keep her from participating in the cons, and, to some extent, willingly. It was hard ( _it was really hard_ ) for a young girl, just entering puberty, still admiring her father, and still so unsure of herself (and her own judgment), to stop participating. Setting aside her admiration and her unsurety, she also had nowhere else to go. _I've been trapped in...adventure._ She had been out of communication with her mother for several years, so far out of communication that she was no longer sure whether her mother still lived where she had lived when Sarah last saw her. Her grandmother had died two years ago, and she and her father had not known until after the funeral. Jenny had found the obituary online. It listed her mother as surviving the death of her grandmother, but it gave no address for her. Jenny was not mentioned.

The one place where all their travels had not taken Jenny and her father was near her mother. Jenny had furtively slipped away and tried to call her a couple of times, but the number she remembered was out of service. She sometimes wondered if her grandmother or her mom had ever even tried to find her, or if her father had ever been in contact with either, told them that Jenny was okay, that she had grown into a teenager, that she was now not so far from becoming a woman.

Over the past couple of years, the pace of cons and of relocations had increased steadily. She had not been in any one place for as long as they had been in San Diego. That was because her father was deep in a long con, one that he kept telling her could set them up for life. He had kept her out of it for once, allowing her, for the first time since she had reached high school age, to have a relatively normal day-to-day life. Relatively: she still came home to an empty rental house almost every evening, and she never knew when, or even if, her father would return. Sometimes, as darkness fell, she reluctantly turned on the police scanner they kept at the house and listened in slow-gnawing fear, expecting to hear Jack Burton's name.

ooOoo

She turned her car and pulled into the parking lot of a small hamburger restaurant, _Ground Chuck,_ that she and her only friend, Gale Gant, often visited after school. Jenny was always on her own at meals and Gale sometimes was too. They had planned to meet today.

Jenny smiled as she always did as she gazed at the sign, a crazy picture of a grinning hamburger patty resting atop a globe of the earth, obscuring the North Pole from view. It made no sense. _I admit it, I like the nonsense of it._ She chuckled to herself, shut off the car and got out.

As Jenny pushed open the front door, she heard the usual bell jingle. She entered the restaurant, the smell of burgers and fries and fresh-baked fruit pies ( _blueberry?_ ) crowding around her in comforting witness. The proprietor, a squat, round man, Morty Arthurs, looked up from his elbow-greased counter-scrubbing. Morty kept the place spotless and he served the best burgers in town, even though _Ground Chuck_ somehow managed never to get the clientele it deserved. Jenny believed it was probably the sign, but Morty refused to listen.

"It's _surrealist_ ," he whined whenever Jenny explained her belief.

She then studied him with narrowed eyes as her tone pancaked: "Like that makes it better, Morty?" That's where the argument always stalled.

ooOoo

"Jenny!" Morty barked in warm-hearted good humor. He was happy to see her; she was happy to see him. Truth be told, he had become like a father to her in the past few months, more than her own father had ever been. ( _Not that Jack had set a high bar. But that's not fair to Morty._ ) Morty had never questioned her, never even looked at her askance, but she knew he knew that she had no home life, no real home. He had taken her in, welcomed her, and given her a place to spend most of her afternoons. Because of him, she felt less lonely than she had in a long time, maybe forever. Well, not just because of him, but because of Gale too. Gale was perched gracefully on a stool at the counter, just down from the spot where Morty had been scrubbing. She waved, smiling metallically at Jenny, her shiny retainer showing.

ooOoo

That was how they had met. Jenny had gone to the dentist to have her braces adjusted, and Gale was there to get a retainer. Gale had gotten up and crossed the dentist's waiting room, sitting lightly beside Jenny.

"Hey, I...know you. I've seen you...around the school, right?" Gale smiled small, hesitantly.

Jenny had not been able to say anything in immediate response. Almost anytime someone talked to her directly, kindly, she slipped into silence or misdirection. No wonder: she'd been taught to converse by an inveterate con man, a man to whom truth was a professional nemesis. He had taught her by his own conversation that conversation was all taking, no giving. _Stealin ', Darlin', not charity. Never charity._ Luckily, Gale had chattered on, haltingly but charmingly, and Jenny, charmed by Gale's kindness, eventually found her voice. She eked out a few sentences, enough to make a friend. It helped that Gale was lonely too, and that alone had called to alone in the waiting room.

ooOoo

Gale patted the stool next to her just after Morty yelled Jenny's name. Jenny sat down.

"Hey, Gale, how was your day?" Gale and Jenny did not have any classes together and rarely saw each other at school. Only in the hallways, if that. Gale gave Sarah a smile, but there was a hitch in it, something in her brown eyes that suggested that the day was not great.

"What'll it be, Jenny?" Morty broke in before Sarah could ask Gale a follow-up question. He grinned at her, his gray crewcut standing out beneath his old-fashioned paper hat. His blue eyes were kind as always, solicitous. "The usual, Mort, Coke, double burger, fries and a _stack_ of pickles on the side." She held her hand high above the counter.

Mort grinned and winked at her. He left the counter, turning to the grill and putting a burger patty on it beside one already sizzling, presumably one for Gale. He got out another bun, separated the halves and put them face-down beside two others, already toasting on the back of the grill. Jenny turned from watching him to see what was up with Gale.

"So, something happened today?"

Gale looked down at the counter and rearranged the silverware atop her napkin. She opened and closed the slim volume of poetry she had on the counter beside her. She had long, shiny, straight black hair that framed her delicate, pale face. Somehow her hair always looked like she had just brushed it but like it still needed to be combed. She took a moment longer, then looked at Jenny. "Robert asked me to the Spring Dance…"

Jenny leaned eagerly toward Gale, put her hand on Gale's shoulder and smiled in joy at her friend. "That's so great! I know you'd been hoping…" Jenny's delivery slowed and softened. Gale hunched down and did not seem joyous about the news. Not at all. "...Gale, what's wrong?"

Gale's eyes dampened. "I...think...I think it's a trick."

"What do you mean, 'trick', Gale? I don't understand."

"I saw Heather talking to Robert before he asked. They didn't know I saw them. They were...conspiring." Gale said the last word in a whisper, almost lost beneath the sound of frying burgers.

"Conspiring? I still.." Jenny was scrambling to catch up.

"Heather put him up to asking, Jenny. I don't understand their plan, but I don't...He didn't ask me because he wanted to take me."

Jenny turned, absently watched Mort flip the burgers.

Gale had been hooked on Robert for a long time, even before Jenny had started at the high school. It had seemed a doomed sort of crush since Robert moved in very different circles at the school. He was a football player, a good one, and a smart guy. His family was wealthy. He had only dated girls in the Heather Chandler crowd, and Gale was certainly not in that crowd, no more than Jenny herself was. Gale was lovely in her small, sloppily elfin way, and she was likely to be valedictorian of the class, but she had never seemed to attract Robert's notice. She had been in a class with him her freshman year, and that had been that. She'd been hopelessly in love with him ever since. Gale wanted it to be a secret, but she gave herself away any time Robert was around. Jenny had known as soon as she first saw Gale look at Robert.

Robert did not really seem like a bad guy. Not like the others in the group he tended to spend time with. But he did spend time with those others, so maybe he was a bad guy after all. He had never participated when they made fun of Gale or Jenny, but he never stopped them either.

Heather, however, was a bitch. Pure and simple. It would be just like her, wanting to humiliate someone already as humble as Gale. In some backwards way, Heather knew the virtues she lacked, and she especially hated anyone who had them. The plot was exactly the kind of puerile deviousness that Jenny had come to expect from Heather.

Mort plated the prepared burgers and fries, and Jenny's extra pickles, and put them in front of the girls. His pained smile suggested to Jenny that he had overheard them.

"Someday, each of you will find a man who will love you and work to understand you, because he will believe-absolutely believe-you are worth loving and worth understanding. Mark my words!" Mort seemed surprised by his sudden vehemence and he turned and went to work scraping the grill. Gale looked at Jenny, raised her eyebrows despite the pain lingering in her eyes, and smiled.

"Well, at least Mort believes in us," Gale said through a half-smile. Jenny thought for a moment about what Mort had said and then she filed his words away. She had no reason to think Mort could see her future (even if he was a sweet man), and she was pretty sure she could. It would resemble her past. No such man would ever be part of it. She could not even conjure him up in her imagination or in her dreams. No, if she ever found someone, it would be someone like her dad, someone who would see her as a means to an end, but not as a person. She turned her back on the inner hurt that prediction caused and picked up her burger. Gale had already started eating.

Jenny gave Gale a couple of minutes as they both ate, then she put her burger down and asked the question that had been hanging over them since before Mort intervened.

"So, did you say _yes_?"

Gale stopped dipping her fry in the ketchup pooled on her plate and closed her eyes for a second. She opened them and said: "Yes. I said _yes_."

"But why, Gale? If you know he's not really into you, even worse, if you know this is some Heather-bitch trap, why would you say _yes_?"

"Because I'd rather have him pretend to like me than to be indifferent to me. Because I have loved him since I saw him and I will take what I can get, Jenny. Even if it means Heather gets the last laugh, I will get to go to a dance with Robert- _sort of_ , anyway. Maybe she'll get the last laugh, but maybe I will get the first dance. And even if he's pretending, he'll still be dancing with me. I never thought I'd ever have Robert pay any attention to me. Like I said, I'll take what I can get, even if it's not all I want, even if it's not exactly...well, _real_."

Jenny nodded. But then she had a thought.

"Say, Gale," Jenny pushed her plate away for a moment, the stack of pickles toppled, "didn't you once tell me that Robert kept a journal?"

"Um...yeah...he mentioned it once, slipped I guess, in the English class we both had as freshmen. He seemed embarrassed by it, but he never took it back." Gale lowered her voice and leaned toward Jenny, her eyes alight, "I am almost sure Robert secretly wants to be a writer. Like me."

Jenny's thought morphed into a full-scale plan. "Say, do you know where Robert lives?" Gale gave her a you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me nod. Jenny slid her napkin toward Gale. "Write it down for me." Gale gave Jenny a searching look. Jenny kept her face neutral. She was a conman's daughter, and sort of a con man ( _con woman, con girl?_ ) herself. It was better if Gale was not sure what Jenny was planning. Gale wrote the address down. Jenny looked at it carefully, then shoved it into her pocket. "Do you have any idea if he will be home tonight?" Gale started shaking her head but stopped. She was embarrassed to admit she knew but she began nodding. "Yes, I know...I know...his schedule. And I _know_ : stalker much? Anyway, this is the night when he and his parents eat at the Club."

Gale waited for an explanation, but Jenny just shrugged and pulled her plate back to her and started to eat the toppled pickles, finishing her dinner. Jenny knew that Gale was used to her silences. No one could be her friend who expected much talk. Jenny had never found it easy to voice her feelings, even to acknowledge that she had them, even around Gale. That had been true since she was very small and friendship had not changed it. Her dad had taken her, a pensive, introspective girl, romantic but not given to emotional display, and had then dungeoned her inside herself, coerced her to mute her emotions further, to silence their voices, so that her repressive consciousness always inserted itself between what she felt and what she said, or, mostly, did not say.

ooOoo

When she left Morty's, she went to the house. Her dad was not there, of course. But he had at least called to tell Jenny that he would not be home. He did not explain. He did not ask if she had eaten or how she would spend her night. He just told her he wasn't going to return until the next day. Or maybe the next.

She stood in her room (the only room that she had ever dared to call _my room_ , even though she knew it could be taken from her at any moment, knew that her dad could pull up stakes and go any time) and looked at herself in her mirror. She had on a black sweater and black jeans, a black beret on her head, and she had tucked her hair up into it. Looking at herself, she laughed; she could not help it. She looked like...a spy.

She had always hated spy movies: all the lying and betrayal was too close to her life, her abnormal life, the cons with her father. The films made her stomach hurt. But she was going to do a little spying tonight, she realized.

She got in her car and drove for a little while, stopping when she got near the address that Gale had given her. She had driven by it on her way home, so that she had a well-lit image of the large house, its surrounding brick wall, and its gated entrance. Her father had taught her what to look for, so as she drove by she spotted the security devices. Expensive but primitive. They depended on not being noticed, but they were easy to notice if you knew what to look for.

Not that she and her dad had ever been straight-up burglars or anything like that. That would have seemed much like real work to Jack Burton. He loved the _game_ of conning, the play. But they had needed to be prepared to get in or out of places without alerting anyone, so her father had taught her how.

She got out of her car, grabbing the gray backpack she had prepared. She walked casually along the sidewalk until she reached one corner of the brick wall that enclosed Robert's house. She stopped in between pools of light from streetlights, checking to ensure that no one was watching her in the gathering darkness. She slipped quickly off the sidewalk and scaled the wall. Jenny was strong and athletic. No one knew that about her, no one except her and a couple of gym teachers who had recognized her innate physical grace and power. One, a gym teacher who coached the girls' soccer team at a previous school, had tried over and over to get her to play soccer, but Jenny knew it would never work. She had been right. A couple of weeks later her dad had moved them on to the next town under the cover of darkness.

 _Under the cover of darkness_. She did not like it, but that was when she felt most comfortable, even if not when she felt most happy. She loved the sun-drenched beach. but as much as she did, she eventually felt exposed there, out-of-control. She did not trust herself when she had her toes in the sand. In the dark, her self-control seemed invincible. She liked it when people had a hard time seeing her, so that they could not make out who she was or the sorts of things she had done with her father.

She was under the cover of darkness now. Before she scaled the wall, she had located the security camera for that section and the sensor it interacted with. She tossed her backpack over the wall, high enough to keep it from breaking the invisible beam between the camera and the sensor, then she scaled the wall. Just like that, she was past the wall. Now she needed to get inside the house and into Robert's room.

She skirted the house, making her way to the rear. She found a ground floor window that was unlocked. Using a trick her dad had taught her, she foiled the sensors in the window and raised it. She had to break the glass to do it, which she wished she could have avoided, but it was necessary. Inside, she opened her backpack quickly, retrieving a small flashlight. She could see well enough not to need it, but she might need it soon. She padded quietly through the house and up the large central staircase. She knew before she got to the second-floor landing where she was going. Robert, an only child, had a REM poster on his door. At least, it seemed likely that was his door and not his parents'.

She was right. Inside, his room was surprisingly un-guy-like. There were posters, of bands (Joy Division, The Cramps, Echo and the Bunnymen) and writers (Samuel Beckett, Kafka, Sartre), not of bikini-clad women. (In fact, there _was_ a small picture of a woman, of Virginia Woolf ( _a postcard?_ ) thumbtacked over Robert's desk. But she seemed to be wearing her clothes-and someone else's.) Not the room Jenny expected at all. The room was neat and smelled clean. Jenny made herself get over her surprise (she never liked surprises, her dad taught her that: a surprised con is a failed con). Gale needed her help.

Jenny opened the largest of the desk drawers. Pencils and erasers and last year's school yearbook. She grabbed the yearbook and turned on her flashlight. She thumbed through it. It looked like a new book, pristine. But she had a second thought. She put it on its spine on the desk. She noticed that it wanted to fall open to a particular page. Opening it there, she saw a photograph of a girl circled in light pencil. It was a photograph of... _Gale_. Nothing was written on the page. There was only the circle. But Jenny smiled. _That_ , she thought, _is a good sign_.

She put the yearbook back in place, then she opened the first of the smaller desk drawers. A couple of stacks of old football cards, a set of Dungeons and Dragons dice ( _really?_ ) and, under a stack of _Harvard Lampoon_ , a leather notebook. _Bingo!_

She picked up the notebook and opened it. Robert's name on the flyleaf and the designation of the current year. It was full of dated entries. It was his diary, this year's model, anyway. She turned to the last entry, which turned out to be written earlier that very day.

ooOoo

 _God, Heather is a bitch._ [Jenny liked Robert more already.] _She wants me to ask GG to the Spring Dance and then to abandon her once we get to the dance, to spend the dance with a friend of Heather's who's coming to town._

 _Where does she come up with this stuff? It's like she goes to Mean Girls school but takes the short bus._

 _Popularity tracks nothing worth anything._

 _I am such a shitty coward. These are not_ my _friends. They're the kids of my_ parents' _friends._

 _But I'm stuck. I'm expected to go along and do what they do, the way my parents do with their parents._

 _And now if I ask Gale out, like I have wanted to since that freshman English class (she's so smart, so sweet, so perfect, but so_ not _aware of it!), I do it with Heather's damn plan hanging over my head. I want to take her to the dance, not pretend to take her._

 _Maybe I can pretend to be pretending to take her? That way, I would take her, but I would keep Heather and the crowd off my back. I have to figure out how to show up with Gale and stay with her, stay away from Heather's friend. Her friend's name, believe it or not, is Paris. Shit!_

ooOoo

Jenny shook her head in disbelief. Gale had good instincts. Robert might have been a coward, but he wasn't a dick. He was a coward in the face of peer pressure; not the first person to cave in. And if he had head and heart enough to care about Gale, there was hope for him. The real problem was Heather's friend. Take her out of the equation, and Robert and Gale might be able to have their pretend-pretend date, their actual date. Gale's patient longing would finally be rewarded. Robert's too.

Jenny put the book back in its place, but not before she looked quickly through the rest of it. Sure enough, 'GG' was on almost every page. Jenny shook her head one final time. These two had been crazy about each other for almost three years and neither knew it or was sure of it. Some of Robert's earlier entries suggested he suspected it, but he was too diffident to feel sure that he could trust the possible signs he saw in Gale's behavior.

Jenny heard a noise. She quickly rearranged things and retraced her steps out of the house. She went back over the wall and got to her car. Whatever the noise was, she had gotten away clean.

ooOoo

It was the day of the Spring Dance.

Heather and some of her awful friends (Robert was not there) had tormented Jenny in the hallway, but she had gotten through it. Knowing something about them, and knowing something they did not know, made her feel less vulnerable, less weak.

She took her time at her locker, even though it meant enduring extra cracks about her braces and her hair. But Jenny was waiting. The moment came. Heather and her girlfriends went into the bathroom, leaving their bags with the guys, as they did every morning. The guys fell into a loud conversation about the upcoming game. They stopped paying attention to their girlfriends' bags.

Jenny walked quickly to Heather's. She bent down beside it as if to tie her tennis shoe. Instead, she quickly rummaged in Heather's bag. There, near the bottom, was an address book. She grabbed it and stuffed it in her bag. She looked up. No one was watching. That was the one good thing about being her. Mostly, no one noticed her. She headed down the hallway. She needed to put in a call to Paris, the girl, not the city.

ooOoo

She had done it. She had left a message for Paris (claiming to be Heather's housekeeper) that Heather was very sick and contagious, and that she would not be going to the Spring Dance. Paris should stay away from Heather for a few days until she was no longer a danger to spread her illness. Jenny had added that Heather needed sleep, so it would be a good idea not to call. It was not a perfect plan, but Jenny thought it was likely to allow Robert and Gale their night.

Jenny had not told Gale about what she found in Robert's diary. She had interfered enough. Those were Robert's secrets to tell Gale. Jenny thought that he almost certainly would tell them to Gale once he was dancing with her.

Jenny had made things more likely by calling Heather's house and leaving a message on the machine about Heather needing straightaway to come to the clinic for consultation about worrisome test results.

There was a decent chance Heather herself would never make it to the dance.

ooOoo

Driving home in the San Diego sunshine, Jenny felt good. The radio was playing, and even though she had no plans to attend the dance (no one had asked her), she imagined Gale and Robert dancing together, twirling in her imagination, twirling her imagination. Yes, she felt good.

Until she got to her house. She saw law enforcement officers outside, everywhere. _Dad!_

Her father had instructed her; they had a contingency plan. She drove past the house. _Never had a home, now I have no house. So much for my room._ Once out of sight, she raced to a wooded area not far away. She leaped from the car and plunged into an overshadowed path through the trees. Money was hidden down the path, money to finance her running, to keep her going. Her dad told her how; he taught her to run. She had contacts, although she loathed the thought of contacting any of them.

She had to go. She had nowhere to go.

She would never know how Gale's night turned out.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in down the road for Chapter 2, "Girl in the War": the aftermath of Graham's recruitment and the first few weeks at the Farm.

Thoughts, observations, comments? How about a review or PM?

A playlist for this story is available on Spotify. Look for _(Mis)Education_.


	2. Girl in the War (Part One)

**A/N1** Our scene shifts in space from San Diego to the woods of Virginia, Camp Peary, the so-called Farm, the CIA training facility. We also shift in time, a couple of weeks forward.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER TWO

 _Girl in the War (Part One)_

* * *

Peter said to Paul,  
"All those words that we wrote  
Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go"  
But now talkin' to God is Laurel beggin' Hardy for a gun  
I gotta girl in the war, man, I wonder what it is we done.  
-Josh Ritter, _Girl in the War_

* * *

Sarah Walker sat on her bed. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, her chin resting on one of her knees, her arms clasping her ankles to her. She had on a grey sweatshirt and grey sweatpants. She was barefoot.

Staring blankly at the empty, unmade bed on the other side of the room, Sarah wondered what had happened to her. _What am I doing here? Who am I?_ She started to rehearse it all again as the door to her room opened and her roommate, Hannah Traylor, walked in.

Hannah had just come from the showers and she was wrapped in one towel while using another to dry her long, red hair. She stepped gracefully to her bed (the one Sarah had been looking at but not seeing) and unfastened the towel she was wearing, letting it drop to the floor. As she stood there, naked, she turned her head and shot Sarah a smirk.

Hannah relished Sarah's discomfort. Sarah neither wanted Hannah to dress in front of her nor to dress in front of Hannah, but Hannah, knowing this, engineered opportunities for one or the other or both. Sarah had quickly realized that there were Heather Chandlers everywhere, of all ages and sizes. It was a Heather Chandler world. Just Sarah's luck to have gotten a more toxic version as a roommate.

Sarah dropped her forehead onto her knees so that she no longer could see Hannah. She heard Hannah bubble out a little laugh.

Hannah did not know Sarah was seventeen, but she had quickly figured out that she was inexperienced in many ways, easily embarrassed, unprepared for certain situations. Hannah had done all she could to exploit and torment that embarrassment, that lack of preparation, to put Sarah in uncomfortable situations. Like this one. Or the one the night before: when Sarah had come back to the room and entered, only to find Hannah on her hands and knees, another recruit behind her, lustful concentration consuming his face. His eyes were shut; he had not noticed Sarah enter the room. Hannah had, however, and she calmly watched the mushrooming of Sarah's horrified expression, all while the guy continued to thrust away behind Hannah.

Sarah had bolted from the room, chased by the guy's sudden, deep groan and Hannah's cheeky laughter. Sarah had sat in the dim hallway for a couple of hours, waiting for Hannah to dismiss the guy, which she eventually did in the doorway to their room, giving him a peck on the lips as she showed him out. He left without really looking at Sarah, and Hannah watched him go, then turned to Sarah: "Next time, feel free to stay and watch. You need the education." She went back into their room.

Sarah, tired and angry and deeply humiliated, got up and muttered to herself. "Next time, put a sock on the doorknob."

Hannah overheard her. "I prefer the knob without a sock." More cheeky laughter.

Sarah let it go; she was no good at talking in general, much less mean-spirited banter.

Her life had gone like that, more or less, for the last couple of weeks.

Hannah was the _de facto_ beauty of the new class of recruits. She was medium tall but maximum curvy, with deep, forest green eyes beneath long, wavy red hair. Sarah was almost sure Hannah was married, but nothing in her behavior suggested that she had any ties to anyone at all. She had been _occupied_ almost from the first night at the Farm, but luckily for Sarah, the scenes of occupation were often the guy's room or some hideaway in the building.

Hannah was also scarily good in the Farm classes. She was a crack shot, had been into gymnastics when younger, and had taken classes in martial arts. Bright and retentive, she was able to do as well with the paperwork and books as she did on the range and in combat classes.

Unsurprisingly, Hannah ruled the seduction class. She was often picked for exercises and was the one the men seemed to all hope to be paired with in the exercises.

The seduction classes: Sarah's special hell, the special hell away from the hell of rooming with Hannah.

ooOoo

"Welcome to seduction class. Let me say this first. This is not whoring school. I am not here to teach you special techniques for the bedroom. If that is what you expect, well, that says more about you than it does about me. I am here to teach you about the nature of human desire-but this is a class in psychology, _not_ pornography, a class in manipulation, _not_ copulation. Sorry if that disappoints some of you. You will have to conduct that research on your own time."

That was how the instructor started the class back on the first day.

Sarah had heaved a huge inward sigh of relief. She had no idea what the class was supposed to be, and Hannah had realized that and understood Sarah's fears, and so began to tell Sarah all sorts of things about what she would be expected to do in front of the class.

When the instructor made the remarks to open the first class, Hannah had shot Sarah a wicked smile, forcing Sarah (who looked away) into acknowledging just how frightened by the class she had been.

The truth was that Sarah had never been kissed. She had never had a boyfriend. She had never gone to a dance or on a date. Never.

She had been too plain, too unnoticeable, _too pretend and_ _temporary_ to have ever been attractive to anyone or to have allowed herself to be, or at least to acknowledge that she was, attracted to anyone. The thought of having a boyfriend thrilled her...and terrified her. She wanted one, desperately, wanted to know what it was like to care about another person deeply. But she did not want to have to lie to him. She could have had boyfriend only by lying: and she did not want to do that. _No, I won't do that._ Her father had taught her to lie. She could do it. But falsehood was not her native tongue, not like her dad. She wanted something _true_.

And so, bizarrely, here she was, seventeen, unkissed and romantically inexperienced, in a CIA Farm seduction class, surrounded by people who were all five to ten years older than she, expected to learn about manipulating human desire. She barely knew anything about her own.

ooOoo

As Hannah dressed, Sarah put her shoes on, studying them. Thinking about the overshadowed path that started in San Diego but that had led her here, so unexpectedly.

The afternoon break was over; time for seduction class.

Despite the instructor comments on the first day, Hannah had kept trying to reawaken and increase Sarah's anxiety. Yesterday, she had pointed out that today's class was on _Preludial Intimacies_. According to the syllabus, it was to be "an investigation of touches, hand-holding, hugs and kisses, the various forms of flirting _et al._ "

Hannah had seized on the description and kept speculating on the ' _et al._ ' Sarah's only two hopes were what the instructor said the first day, and her own wallflower status: maybe no one would notice her. She had gone through high school mostly unnoticed, after all. The seduction instructor had not seemed to notice her yet. She was banking on being overlooked.

As she arrived at class, Sarah's anxiety soared. Her stomach was wound around, a cat's cradle. She was careful to sit in the back corner of the room, and to lean forward, resting her elbows on the table, making herself as small a target as possible.

The instructor came in, walked to the front, and put down his notes on the lectern. Tall and thin, graceless and unattractive, he seemed exactly the wrong person to be teaching the class. After using his index finger to push his glasses back up on his nose, he began without further preamble.

"Alright, folks, let's talk about _flirting_. Here is the first and most important thing to know: a person can be flirting and be unaware of that fact.

"This unselfconscious flirting is very important. Almost everything people do unselfconsciously is important for you as agents, because, in such moments, they are revealing themselves, giving expression to _who_ and _what_ and _why_ they are.

"You need to recognize such moments in others and learn to read them correctly. But you also need to cultivate a semblance of unselfconsciousness yourselves, a conscious unselfconsciousness that is not easily detectable.

"The reason why should be obvious. Because in your work, marks and assets are generally a suspicious lot. They will be watching you, trying to recognize unselfconscious moments in your behavior and trying to read them. You have to learn to make them think they have recognized such moments in your behavior, and you need them to read in those moments what you want them to read…You want to read but not be read." _Stealin', Darlin', never charity._

Sarah relaxed a bit and took notes. It was like hearing her dad talk again, but with an Ivy League vocabulary ( _and a willingness to add final g's_ ). Sarah had been living out these lessons for a long time. She had a full, practical grasp of the points, she realized.

But the vocabulary was not the only difference. When her father had taught these lessons, partly because of who he was and partly because of how young she was when he started teaching her, he had made it all seem a game, play-acting, fun in its way. But here, it was not a game, not play-acting, not fun. It was weaponized. It was not just about the success of some small con; it was about life and death. A game of sorts, but for the highest stakes. And Sarah worried that the increase in the stakes meant that the rules she understood had changed too. She was caught up in reflection when she realized that the instructor was looking at her.

"Sarah? Sarah Walker?"

 _Oh, God, he is calling on me!_ She tried to shrink into her chair, but it was not going to work. He made eye contact with her and gestured for her to come to the front of the class. "Ms. Walker, please come forward." Sarah stood with a sinking feeling. She could see Hannah, turned in her chair, grinning in...triumph? Sarah walked a mile on the green carpet, finally, days later, reaching the lectern.

"Very good. And you," the instructor pointed with a long finger, "James Unroe, come forward."

A short, dark-haired man with a slight overbite stepped up to the podium from his seat near the front. He smiled nervously at Sarah. She looked away.

"Now, here we have two people who, we will pretend, have just met. We will further pretend that Sarah is an agent and that James is her mark. She is approaching him for the first time and she needs to establish significant control over him as quickly as possible." He said this looking at the two of them but then turned to the class. "How should she do that?"

Hannah piped up from her seat. "Flirt! Make him think he might get...well, call it 'lucky'." Hannah pinched her features dramatically over a frown and the class laughed. Sarah shrank inside to an almost invisible point. She kept her eyes on the floor.

The instructor cleared his throat and she looked up. "So, Ms. Walker, do you agree with Ms. Traylor?"

This had been something her father never asked of her, never even hinted at. He had never asked her to flirt with someone as part of a con. He had taught her about self-consciousness and unselfconsciousness, but he had never asked her to use the knowledge in this way. In other ways, yes, lying and manipulating, pretending to be a girl scout or injured in an accident, but not in any...romantic...way. She had not really thought about it, but she realized that her father did have _limits_ , things he would not do or ask her to do. She felt an unexpected flush of affection for him.

Unfortunately, the instructor saw her flush and took it to have a different meaning. "I take it Ms. Walker does agree with you, Ms. Traylor. So, Ms. Walker, I want to see you flirt unselfconsciously with Mr. Unroe. Do your worst, by which I mean your _best_." He stepped away from the two of them, returning to the lectern so that the class had an unobstructed view.

Sarah scanned the room furtively. Hannah was now basking in Sarah's quandary. Everyone in the class was looking at her. She was tempted to pray for a miracle, to ask be transported from that room to some other place. But she knew that was not going to work. No escape _ex machina_. She was stuck.

She thought about her dad again. "Darlin', readin' people is not hard. Remember, all people are like _batteries_ …" Sarah had looked at her father in silent incomprehension. He grinned with one corner of his mouth and went on. "Two poles, a positive and a negative. We all believe there is something that is our long suit, what we are particularly good at or what distinguishes us. A skill, or looks, money...And a negative, a weakness, a tragic, fatal flaw, that we want to hide and keep hidden from the world. To really get somethin' from people, you have to manage to touch both poles at the same time, more or less."

Shaking off the memory, Sarah made herself look carefully at James. He was looking at her, his expression guarded but also somehow expectant. He straightened up as she gazed at him, as her eyes met his. And then Sarah knew. She stepped toward him, swallowing her reluctance and embarrassment, forcing herself forward.

"Hi!" She caught his eyes with hers again, deliberately slumping a bit to make their heights more equal. She smiled, forgetting for the moment about her braces and about being the only one at the Farm with them. She reached out and touched his arm, just barely, her fingers brushing it downward toward his wrist. "I'm Sarah. I saw you from across the room; you...sort of stood out. I was wondering...if you'd like to buy me a drink." Sarah had no idea where that last phrase came from. A tv show? A movie? She'd never said those words before. And her drinking had been confined to a warm beer or two with Gale when they decided to try it together.

But the words, not hers but somehow hers, seemed to stir James. He lost track of where they were; she could see it in his eyes. Already, he was responding to her, not the room. She rubbed her own hand along her arm slowly, upward toward her shoulder, keeping his eyes caught but making sure the gesture was visible. James straightened up even more.

"Good. Stop. Very good. Hold that thought, that moment" The instructor walked from behind the lectern to stand beside Sarah. "Ms. Walker, that was very good. Tell me what you were thinking, responding to." Sarah did not want to answer the question. James seemed like a nice guy. But the instructor was waiting on her, clearly intent on forcing her to talk.

"I noticed that James wanted to be looked at a certain way, wanted someone to hold...his gaze. He has nice eyes, kind eyes; he knows that, I think. And I noticed that he felt awkward about his height. So, I made sure our eyes were on the level...so to speak."

The instructor turned to the class. " _That_ is how this is done. Subtle clues, subtle reactions. Little things do big, big emotional work, folks."

He turned back to Sarah. "Now, Ms. Walker, since you have done so well, I want you to do one more thing. Let's imagine that Mr. Unroe has bought you that drink and that things between you are progressing. You can tell he is interested, interested enough to be pliable, controllable. How do you finalize that, how do you make sure you have set the hook?"

Sarah knew the answer, she realized. But she did not want to say it.

She could feel all the eyes in the room on her still; there was a dense expectancy now filling the room. Some recruits were simply expecting _something_. Others, like Hannah, were expecting Sarah to fail, to crumble under the pressure and exposure, hoping for it. The instructor was simply looking at her, waiting.

Sarah had never been kissed. She did not want to surrender her first kiss to _this._ James was a nice guy, but she wanted her first kiss to be a _kiss_ : not a mechanical procedure defined by geometrical positions of two sets of lips, but an _event_ , heart caressing heart through lips.

That was what she wanted. But it was not what she was going to get. Her first kiss was going to happen here, now, in this small grey amphitheater, beneath these distorting fluorescent lights, with this near-stranger, _meaninglessly_ , or with a meaning that was all _wrong_. She blinked back herself, her tears.

She was at the Farm, Jenny no more, (or to re-contact her beginning) Sam no more. She was Sarah Walker, CIA recruit, handpicked by the Director, Langston Graham. She had a life to live whether she liked it or not.

She stepped to James and she put her hands gently on his cheeks. She smiled at him, a vague suggestion in her smile but her eyes dark and unreadable, then she kissed him, lightly at first, a mere brush, and then returning with more intensity. She opened her lips (she'd read books, she knew how this was supposed to work, in theory, anyway). James' lips parted in answer and she felt him tense, his body galvanize, his arms move to her arms. And then she pulled back, parted from him.

Her stomach hurt. Her heart ached. She felt a heavy wave of disgust-not aimed at James, but at herself. It crashed over her.

James was standing transfixed, his lips still parted a little, his eyes focused on the middle distance, lost. The instructor snapped his fingers and James returned to the scene, his eyes properly focused. Again, laughter from the class, but mixed with nervousness. They had been caught up in the scene too.

"And that, folks, that is how this is done. Walker has now officially controlled her mark. There's a puppy in her leash." James blushed furiously, as did Sarah. Hannah was scowling at the top of her table. The room suddenly burst into excited talk. The instructor motioned for Sarah to come closer.

"Please talk to me after class, Ms. Walker." Sarah nodded.

She wanted to sprint to her room; she wanted to hide and to cry. _My first kiss, stolen, stolen by circumstance. Like so much of what matters or has mattered to me. Nothing is ever mine._ She hung her head slightly and retreated to her seat, studying her shoes. She did not notice the fact that the other recruits were all now noticing her. Or that Hannah's scowl was now affixed to Sarah's back.

ooOoo

The class ended and Sarah walked through the recruits who were heading out. She got to the front of the room and waited for the instructor. He was rearranging his notes and scribbling something on a small sheet of paper. She saw that Hannah was talking with James. She shook her head inwardly. Hannah now had something to prove where Mr. Unroe was concerned, poor guy.

"Ms. Walker, that was a powerful display of intuitive seduction, of practical psychology and of acting skills. There's a saying among football coaches: _you can't coach speed_. I can't teach what you did. When you let yourself go, you knew what to do. Knew it. I believe that you have talent we should invest in. Meet me here tomorrow." He handed her the sheet of paper. "You don't need to bring anything with you. We will have everything necessary." She looked at him and nodded. _What else can I do?_

Hannah and James had left the classroom. Sarah made her way back to her room. Finding it empty, and with her day of classes finished, she doffed the grey sweats, grabbed some jeans and a t-shirt, a towel and her toiletries, and went down the hall to the showers. Mercifully, like her room, they were empty too. She climbed in one of the stalls and turned the water on, as hot as she could stand. She stood under the water, her skin scalded by it, and she cried warm tears that streaked down her cheeks and streamed into the hot water, tears stolen from her, like her first kiss, by circumstance.

ooOoo

Langston Graham had flown her from San Diego to DC on the jet he had used to make the trip from DC to San Diego. He had been careful with her, explaining to what had happened, how he had come to be in the woods near the rental house she and her father had been living in.

Her father's deep con had gone sideways. Unbeknownst to Jack Burton, his mark was a close friend of an important figure in California-Mexico organized crime. The mark had talked about the con without knowing it to be a con, but his friend's suspicions had been aroused. The mark had been followed and Jack had eventually been identified. But the men following Jack had themselves been followed, acting on orders from Graham. They had come to see the danger Jack was in-and perhaps his daughter too, even though she was not involved in the con. Graham had shut it down, taken her dad into custody as a way of preventing the hit that had been ordered on him.

Sarah had been too frightened by that news and too frightened of Graham to ask the obvious question, so he asked it of himself for her.

"No doubt you are wondering why the Director of the CIA had any interest in the dealings of a small-time con man on the opposite coast? Well, the answer is that I was interested because of his daughter, because of you. You see, a couple of years ago, one of my agents, a deep cover agent, had been on 'vacation' in a small town on the Oregon coast, Coos Bay. Oh, you remember it? Yes, you and your father were there for a while. Perhaps you remember a man, Donald, not his real name, by the way, who was, for a little while, a drinking buddy of your dad's?"

Jenny did remember the man, but barely. Her dad had introduced her to him one night. She remembered the name more than the face. In fact, now that she thought about it, the man had managed to stay in the shadows when she met him. She'd never really gotten a close look at him. Her dad had gone out with him in the evenings often during the weeks they had spent in Coos Bay, leaving Jenny, as usual, alone in the motel. They had left after a while, and her father had never mentioned Donald again. She had never thought of him again.

"Donald got to know your father, and through him, he got to know about you. I don't know whether your father ever told you this, but your father thinks you have native gifts for conning that far outstrip his own." Jenny shook her head. "And Donald found a way to observe your work with your father. What he saw confirmed your father's opinion. Donald knew I am always on the lookout for...talent...and he told me about you. He was very excited about you. Since then, I have been...keeping tabs. I agree with Jack Burton and with Donald. You have exceptional promise."

He had opened his briefcase and taken out a file, with the name 'Sarah Walker' on it, but with a photograph of her (obviously taken unawares) paperclipped to it.

Jenny finally found her voice. "Who is Sarah Walker?"

Graham seemed to find the question funny. He smiled, then actually chuckled.

"Who, indeed? But the answer, for now, is this: _she's you_." He opened the file and held it out so that she could see it. Then he put it in her hands.

There were photographs of her and her father. A sheet of paper listing all the towns in which they'd run cons in the last couple of years. There were also copies of documents from various schools-enrollment sheets, report cards, test results _(is my IQ really that high?_ ), even a sheet of comments by various teachers from various schools, including the gym teacher who had begged Jenny to come out for the girls' soccer team.

There were also documents that Jenny knew had to be fake because they were false. A birth certificate for _Sarah Walker_ , as well as a social security card, and other bits and pieces of an identity. Jenny had been through this drill often enough with her father, but never with so much resource, never with this sort of reach. She and her father made up names and backstories, but they rarely had the time or money to build the fake identities. They had to rely on themselves, on the lies, on being quick enough to anticipate or divert suspicion.

But this was a fully prepared life, and one, Jenny now was beginning to really understand, she was supposed to step into, like Cinderella into the magical glass slippers and gown. Graham made a strange sort of fairy godmother. But being airborne in a private jet did seem a lot like being in a magical pumpkin carriage, pulled by mice translated into horses.

After letting her look for a few minutes, Graham handed her a small stack of papers, employment papers for the CIA. The name 'Sarah Walker' was already on the top sheet, as was various personal information.

"I can keep your father safe, albeit safe in a cell. You see, the hit is one that could be carried out inside unless your father is protected. I will protect him if you will consent to become an agent. Or, at least, to go to the Farm, the school where agents are trained, and make a determined effort to not only succeed there but to excel. I think your future, _Sarah_ (if I may) is CIA; you are a born spy. I think we will be a great team, do great things together."

Graham fished inside his suit coat and took a ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket, clicked it, and held it out to Jenny. _Consent? I am_ seventeen _. But this is my life. I have to protect Dad._

Jenny took the pen and Sarah signed her name.

ooOoo

The next morning, shortly after the Virginia dawn, Sarah walked down a long corridor in a part of the Farm she had yet to visit. At the end of the corridor stood the seduction class instructor and two women. They waited for her to reach them. The instructor nodded at her then looked at the women. They stared at Sarah, examining her like a bug under glass, head to toe. They nodded back to him. He opened the door and led Sarah and the two women inside. It was a large room. It looked half like a clothes stores and half like a beautician's parlor.

The instructor led her to a large reclining chair on rollers. "Sit down, Sarah. We have work to do." The two women began to bustle about. Before Sarah knew what was happening, one of the women pulled the chair backwards, stopping next to a sink. She reclined the chair so that Sarah's head was suspended over the sink. And then Sarah heard running water and felt it, warm, soaking her hair. The woman spoke. "I'm thinking...blonde."

The other woman knelt at Sarah's feet and pulled off Sarah's shoes and socks. "I will do the pedicure first, then the manicure."

The instructor grunted softly in agreement. "Good. Then we'll do the makeover, and start trying on clothes. Graham is here today. He wants to see her when we finish." The instructor's tone made it clear Graham had given an order.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for more of life on the Farm, Chapter 3 "Girl in the War (Part Two)". Outer changes lead to inner changes?

I'm deciding whether to go on with this or not. If you want it to continue, be sure to say so in a review or a PM. Otherwise, I may decide to shut it down.


	3. Girl in the War (Part Two)

**A/N1** You can take the girl from the Farm, but can you take the Farm from the girl? More of our heroine's life as a CIA recruit.

Thanks for the reviews and PMs. Good to know folks are interested to see where this story takes us.

By the way, don't fear: this thing will not be endless, will not go on forever. I have a clear plan now and a destination in mind. While I will tell this tale more slowly than most of mine, it will not be longer than, say, Turned Tables, and will likely be much shorter than that.

As you can tell, many of the stories (chapters) will be sad. I don't see how to avoid that, given what canon tells us about Sarah's backstory: a mysteriously broken home; a confidence man as a father; an illegal recruitment into the CIA; an exposure to life and death training while a girl (submerged in a very adult environment); eventual instatement as Graham's Enforcer. _Not a formula for fun and frolic_.

My goal is to create a credible backstory for the woman on the screen in canon, one that is not only credible but light-shedding, that puts her actions into a wider, explanatory context, making better sense of them, making better sense of her reactions and non-reactions. At any rate, understanding these chapters, from the first forward, means trying to see them in relationship to canon moments. I will sometimes spell those relationships out, but often I will be expecting you to recognize them without any explicit guidance from me.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

* * *

CHAPTER THREE

 _Girl in the War (Part Two)_

* * *

Because the keys to the kingdom got locked inside the kingdom  
And the angels fly around in there, but we can't see them  
And I gotta girl in the war, Paul, I know that they can hear me yell  
If they can't find a way to help, they can go to Hell  
If they can't find a way to help her, they can go to Hell  
-Josh Ritter, _Girl in the War_

* * *

Sarah closed her eyes, stoically allowing the two women to work. One was finishing the pedicure. The other was now applying color to Sarah's hair. In another place, at another time, this sort of treatment would have felt like pampering. She and her father had rarely been able to afford anything like this.

When a con was successful, they had to manage the money carefully, because it was never clear when the next con would begin or if it would end successfully. Although Jack Burton constantly talked about getting rich from the con game, the sad truth was that they had really only muddled by: sometimes they were so strapped for cash, they worried about how to pay for gas or for a night in a motel. Often enough, she had curled up in the front seat of the car while her dad did the same in the back seat, and they had spent the night like that. They were, for all intents and purposes, homeless. But being on the move, not stuck on the street, obscured that fact.

Her braces had been the one big expense of that sort. Other than that, once or twice a year, maybe, she had been able to get her hair cut by someone who knew what they were doing. The rest of the time, Jack played beautician. _Poorly_.

The woman had finished applying the color to Sarah's hair, so she turned her attention to Sarah's face, using tweezers to shape her eyebrows. "You know," the woman said, not unkindly, "you have nice skin, a beautiful face; it's just been hidden beneath this hair," the woman sighed, "and behind these braces. The Farm dentist is due to be along soon," the woman turned her wrist and considered her watch, "and he will take the braces off. You will be lovely."

Sarah jolted. It was true that the braces had been due to come off soon, but with all that had happened, Sarah had expected to be stuck with them for the foreseeable future. And to be _lovely_ : that seemed beyond the bounds of possibility. She had never thought that taking off the braces would make her lovely. She thought it would mean that she could finally leave the specialized toothbrush behind, maybe bite into an apple without worry.

She had not known what was going to happen this morning.

The thought of Cinderella flitted into her mind again, as it had on Graham's plane, except the story now seemed darker, more _fell_. She was not being transformed to find her prince, true love, happiness: she was being transformed into something else, an instrument of falsity, lies, deception. _At least I have Hannah as the evil stepsister. She's well cast._

ooOoo

Sarah stood, wobbly, in a pair of blue heels.

Her hair was done, her face, her nails. It had taken the dentist forty minutes, but her braces were gone. He had spent thirty minutes more whitening her teeth. She would go back for a few more sessions, but he told her that her teeth had remained quite white beneath the braces. The only remainder from the braces seemed to be the series of small calluses she could now feel inside her lips - left over from the rubbing of the soft skin against the metal.

She had been combed and curled and made up. One of the women and the instructor were haggling over dresses on the long clothes rack. The other woman was beside Sarah. Although Sarah was standing in the blue heels, she was otherwise dressed as she had been when she arrived, in the standard grey sweats. She had not seen herself. She had been given no access to a mirror. She felt...strange...like she was not herself any longer, but had yet to become someone else.

"We need to teach you to walk in heels," the woman beside her said. "We can use the time it will take those two to decide on a dress to get this done. Walk a few steps for me." Sarah stepped forward hesitantly, trying to work out how to have her foot meet the ground given the long, spiky heel. She almost stumbled. She owned no heels. She had tried some on in shoe stores, just for the fun of it. But she'd never seriously contemplated having to walk around in them. She took a few more steps, settling into a more workable gait. She heard the woman mutter to herself. Then she spoke to Sarah. "Ok, stop. Here's the thing. Imagine you are leaving a path in new snow. If you walk as you would normally, you will leave a right-foot path and a left-foot path, one beside the other. But if you walk like that in heels, you look like a lumberjack on miniature stilts." Sarah reddened and the woman chuckled, but kindly. "You don't just wear heels, you have to _walk_ heels. Put one foot down in front of the other, heel to toe, on the same line, so that you are leaving only one path. One line." Sarah shot the woman a slightly exasperated look and the woman chuckled again. "Welcome to the footwear of the patriarchy. Yes, heels make your legs look nice; yes, heels, walked in correctly, increase the...sway...of parts of you. But they are podiatric torture devices, the fashionable woman's version of the ballet dancer's _on pointe_. They suck. But in the line of work you have chosen, they will be a part of the arsenal."

 _Chosen? What choice did I have? Arsenal? My body is not a weapon. I am not a weapon._ Sarah kept the thoughts to herself and took a few steps, trying to do as the woman said. The woman made an appreciative sound. "Mmmhmm. Very good, that's right." Sarah kept walking, trying to memorize the pattern of it, when the other woman and the instructor walked to her, clothes in hand.

ooOoo

They put her in a short blue dress. It clung to her all over, making her feel self-conscious. She had normally worn clothes that were a bit oversized, afraid that if she wore anything at all tight or revealing, Heather Graham and her friends would have attacked her for it, humiliated her. She felt almost naked in the dress - her legs exposed, the rest of her barely hidden. The instructor and the two women stood several feet in front of her, each with arms crossed, each with his or head tilted to the left, sizing her up, evaluating.

Impressed.

She then understood that one cost of her body becoming a weapon, of her becoming a weapon, was that she was now officially an _object_ : she was scrutinizable, evaluable, acceptable or unacceptable, all independent of her being a person, independent of her thoughts or feelings, her wishes or hopes. That she was a person at this moment was an _afterthought_ \- if that. Perhaps it would be from now on.

She swallowed hard and stood still under the evaluation.

The instructor finally spoke. "Amazing. A miracle." The two women nodded their agreement. One of them, the one that had helped her walk in heels, crossed to Sarah and took her hand. She led her to a set of full-length mirrors that had been turned away from the scene of Sarah's transformation. She dropped Sarah's hand as Sarah stepped in front of the triptych of mirrors.

ooOoo

A girl looked into the mirrors; a woman looked out.

Sarah froze. Breathless. Disbelieving. _Mirror, mirror on the wall, who..?_

The woman looking out at Sarah was tall, her height not exaggerated but rather accentuated by the blue heels. Her legs were long. Very long. Her figure was available to view, attractive, even compelling. Her long blonde hair cascaded alongside her face. The touch of makeup that had been applied made her lips redder, gave her cheeks a slight blush - and both, along with the blue dress and blue heels, made her eyes bluer, almost unearthly, as if the sky itself could see. The woman was beautiful.

 _The woman is_ me _?_ _Who_ am _I?_

The beautician who had led her to the mirrors stepped to Sarah and pushed her hand against the small of Sarah's back, straightening her posture. "Let's not slump and minimize those breasts. Assets forward."

The hypnotic moment shattered, although the mirrors were unbroken.

The identity between the girl in front of the mirror and the blonde woman inside it was established. Sarah _was_ the woman in the mirror - she was in front of it and inside it.

 _Inside_. Sarah's outsides had changed, but her insides were the same. The miraculous transformation was skin deep. No deeper. She had changed. And not changed. The awkward girl was still there but camouflaged by the statuesque beauty. She had changed names many times before. She had matured. But this change divided her in two - con man's daughter within, CIA recruit without. She felt the fission in her being; she was not sure any re-fusion was possible.

Her dad had made her go to church, to Sunday School, a few Sundays as part of a con. ( _We will burn for that if there is a Hell.)_ The teacher, a puffy, sweet woman with bluish hair, told them various stories, including the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Sarah thought about the snake, the serpent, and Eve. Maybe Eve came to mind because of her earlier thought about the apple, she did not know.

But she thought about the story even though she had not thought of it in years. At the time she had not paid much attention to it. _Temptations, promises, trade-offs, punishments. What had the teacher called it? 'The Fall of Humankind'._

 _The Fall of Sarah Walker._

Sarah knew that Eve and Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella were getting all jumbled in her head. But she was all jumbled, divided, unsure: _Who am I? Sam. Jenny. So many names between, so many years. Jenny. Sarah. So much change between, so few days. Who am I?_

The seduction instructor cleared his throat, yanking Sarah from her mirror-directed reverie. "We need to go see Graham." Sarah started toward her grey sweats. "No, no, he wants to see the results of what we have done. We'll make sure that those get back to your room." The instructor eyed Sarah again, appraisingly. She knew he liked what he saw - and that he saw a weapon, not a girl, not a person. "Come with me. I'll walk you to Graham."

ooOoo

They took a path through the buildings that Sarah did not recognize. She was struggling to keep up, wearing the unfamiliar heels, and she could feel a blister starting to form on her left heel. She bit her lip, ignoring the pain, and made herself match the instructor's long strides as well as she could.

They turned a corner and found themselves walking in the opposite direction from a group of recruits, but from a class ahead of Sarah's. As Sarah and the instructor passed through the grey sweats, Sarah felt the eyes of the recruits on her, almost like hands. She heard a number of muttered expletives, " _Daaammmnnn…_ ", and one quiet but audible wolf whistle. She had no idea how to react. She blushed. She had never been the object of that sort of attention before. Undiluted. Uncensored. Raw.

This was not quite the attention she had gotten from the instructor or the two women. It was similar but different. They saw her as a tool, a weapon. The men who exclaimed and the one wolf-whistled saw her as a tool, but one for a very different purpose, for the supplying of pleasure, the realization of fantasy. Both attentions unnerved her, but the second more than the first. She was unsure why.

They finally arrived at an office, Graham's. The administrative assistant, an attractive woman in her forties, frowned at Sarah the moment she saw her. But she picked up the phone and told Graham that the visitors he expected had arrived. She stood up and led them to the door, opening it for them.

They entered and Graham stood. He nodded once in greeting to the instructor, then turned his full attention - his stare - on Sarah. She felt her stomach knot. Graham's gaze traveled her from hair to feet, tracing out the curves of her body and of her legs before coming to rest on the blue heels. But Graham's attention was like the instructor's. It was not a wolf-whistle gaze, but a weapon gaze. He was sizing her up; she had a sudden premonition that he expected her to be...deadly. _A drop-dead beauty_ : in a different sense than she had ever attached to that phrase. The premonition passed but left a chill in its wake. Sarah unselfconsciously hugged herself. _What am I doing here?_

Graham tore his eyes away and made an expansive gesture toward the two chairs facing his heavy desk. "Please, sit." They did. So did Graham.

Graham focused on the instructor. "So, tell me, what do you think of my choice?" There seemed to be a surprising, comfortable affability between the two men. She had never seen Graham relax before. She was aware all-at-once that she might as well have not been in the room: she was the choice; they were going to talk about her while she sat there.

The instructor wove his long fingers together in front of his face, leaving the index fingers extended but touching, and he leaned them against his lips in thought.

After a moment: "Well, it took her a minute, but, as you predicted, she is a _natural_. I saw something even on the first days, a depth of comprehension, a familiarity with what I was saying even if not the terms I was saying it in. But when I called her up the other day, as you suggested, she was...extraordinary."

Sarah was sitting in her chair, her knees together, trying to decide where to look. Do you watch people who are talking as if you are not there? Do you not? She ended up staring down at the blue heels, trying to move the left one unobtrusively so as to relieve the blister on her foot.

"I told you she would be. And we have only scratched…" Graham glanced at her sitting there in blue, "...the surface. I predict that she will begin to distinguish herself across the curriculum. The students currently holding the first places in those classes will be hard-pressed to hang on…" Graham grinned at the instructor.

"I suspect you are right. But I wanted to ask...implore...you. Let me have her for more advanced seduction work. She would be remarkable at infiltration, and at handling marks or assets. I suggest that we keep her on the... _softer_ side of things."

A shadow flitted across Graham's face. "I don't think _we_ are going to go that way, not unless my plans for her run aground unexpectedly. I certainly want her to know what you have to teach her; I want her to have as many tools in her toolbox as possible, but I don't think she will _specialize_ in what you teach."

Sarah felt resentment rising in her. Decisions were being made for her, in her presence, with no consultation of her at all. Yes, she was young - too young to be sitting where she was sitting. But she _was_ sitting there. She had a mind of her own, hopes of her own. Maybe she could not get away from the Farm because of her father's plight. But maybe she could have some input into what happened to her?

Clearly, though, Graham had no intention of involving her in the decision, or involving the instructor. Graham had a plan.

The instructor unlaced his fingers and rubbed his palms on the armrests of his chair in frustration. Graham watched the performance with a hint of a smile, looking at the instructor and inviting...no, daring...him to speak, to continue. He did not.

Graham finally looked at Sarah. "Tell me, Sarah, have you gotten to knives in combat training yet?"

She shook her head. Graham shot a look at the instructor. "Sarah comes to us already supplied with prodigious...cutlery skills. She demonstrated it for me when I first approached her in San Diego. I assume your father taught you?"

She nodded, but then added in a small voice, shocked to hear herself. "Yes, he did. He had a friend of his help too, a specialist in...weapons. Dad thought I needed to be able to defend myself." She shut up.

"He was right, although I think he trained you, or had you trained, past what was necessary. I know you could have killed me in San Diego, and I believe you would have been willing to do it if it had come to that." Graham actually smiled as he finished the sentence.

Sarah was by no means sure that was true. It was true that she had missed him on purpose. But she was not sure she could have hit him on purpose. She noticed that the instructor was now watching Graham's interaction with her closely, with undisguised curiosity. She made herself go blank, relaxing her face, becoming impassive - as her father had taught her to do, as the instructor was teaching her to do.

"Anyway, I am looking forward to the results from your knife training, really, from all of your training. You are here to not just become an agent, Sarah, remember: you are here to _excel_ , to push yourself as far as you can and then to push some more. Nothing less is acceptable. _People_ are depending on you." Smile. "You seem off to a good start. I'm glad. I'm going to push you when the time comes; you need to be ready."

Graham shifted his attention to paperwork on his desk. He was done with the discussion. The instructor stood and glanced at Sarah, his glance telling her they needed to go. She stood and followed the instructor out of the office.

Once they were back in the hallways, the instructor turned to her, looking at her, not at a tool. The look was brief, intense, and never repeated in her time at the Farm. "I'm sorry," he said and then he spoke no more.

ooOoo

Sarah parted company wordlessly with the instructor outside her room. It was Saturday, and so most recruits had the day off. The group she and the instructor ran into in the hallway was probably making up for some work missed earlier. Her class had no make-up work scheduled, so the day was hers. She opened the door and stepped into the room.

The pain from the blister on her foot made her aware of what had happened to her, the transformation, and of what she was still wearing - the blue dress and heels. Her blister made her aware of that at the same moment that Hannah's shocked gaze made Sarah aware of it.

Hannah's face immediately hardened. "I don't know who the hell you are, blondie, but you need to turn around and go find a corner to work." Sarah flinched but caught sight of an odd quality in Hannah's expression: _envy_.

But her flinch brought her into focus for Hannah. After an almost cartoonish double-take, Hannah mouthed her name: "Sarah?"

The power structure between the two women was swept away by a sudden groundswell. Sarah took hold of herself after the flinch and made herself stand straight, as if the beautician's hand were once again on her back.

Hannah took an involuntary step backward, both from the force of the recognition and in order to decrease the angle of her neck as she gazed _up_ at Sarah. Sarah had always been the taller of the two, by a distance, but it had never seemed that way. Not at all. Sarah had seemed smaller, less consequential, less present. Until now. Now she was taller, obviously taller - and she was as womanly, as attractive as Hannah, and then some. Sarah's presence, somehow symbolized by her golden hair, filled the room, shone through it. Sarah saw all of that register unselfconsciously on Hannah's face before Hannah's effort to control herself succeeded. It was Sarah, and not Hannah, who now owned the room.

"What the hell? From wallflower to _Miss Congeniality?_ " Hannah was trying to find more words but those seemed to be all she had for the moment.

And for the first time in her life, in a face-to-face moment, Sarah wrested the world from the Heather Grahams. She was not clear what to do with it, now that she had it, but the feeling of not being behind-hand, of not being the butt of the joke; no, even more, the feeling of being out-in-front, of being the center of deferential attention, was like a momentary drug. Sarah, hard-pressed to talk normally, was the one who first found words.

"What's the trouble, Hannah? Never known anyone who kept her light hidden under a bushel?" _That Sunday School class again._ And then, before she knew what she was saying or doing, years of frustration took her tongue and made it their own: "They've recast our film, Hannah; you're now the frowzy sidekick; I'm the star." With that, not knowing how to go on or how to gauge the flash on anger on Hannah's face, Sarah turned on her heels and left the room, but with the presence of mind to put one foot in front of the other heel to toe. Sway. _One line_.

ooOoo

Sarah had found a corner to sit in alone. She was still in blue, and felt it, and not just because of what she was wearing. The momentary high of the confrontation with Hannah had quickly receded and left regret and chastisement in its wake. _Hannah had it coming, but I've now turned my tormentor into my enemy. She will work to humiliate me for the rest of the time we are here._ Nursing this thought, and facing the prospect of months more of Hannah, Sarah heard someone say her name softly. She had been paying no attention to her surroundings. Her thoughts and the pain in her heel had preoccupied her.

She looked up to find James Unroe standing there, looking at her. His gaze was curious but not shocked. In fact, it was soft and warm and kind. "Um, hey, Sarah. Say, you...clean up nice." He was looking into her eyes, not at her legs or her chest. She motioned for him to sit down beside her on the bench. He did. They sat in silence for a for minutes.

She finally turned to him. "About yesterday…"

He waved her off. "No problem. The instructor was right. You are good at this."

Sarah felt both a surge of warmth and a twinge of embarrassment at James' words. "Thanks."

The sat in silence a while longer. Then Sarah spoke again. "No more comment on all...this?" She waved her hand at herself, blonde hair to blue heels.

"Ah, no. I mean, you look...nice, Sarah. But I thought that from the first day of class. I knew...I knew you were beautiful that day." James smiled shyly at her. "This…" he imitated her wave, "is confirmation, _not_ revelation." They both laughed at his deliberate parody of the seduction instructor's first lecture.

"James," Sarah said, a bit puzzled at her own willingness to talk, "why are you here, at the Farm, I mean?"

He shrugged. "I'm not sure. I was a good student at Northwestern, but not good enough to go on to grad school - and that was my first choice. I didn't want to take over Dad's insurance business. I got recruited at a job fair, and this seemed like it might be...I don't know...worthwhile." A second shrug.

"Is it not?"

"I don't know. Maybe if you are the right kind of person, say, like Hannah. She's a _natural_ in a way that you aren't…"

"What's that mean, James?"

He was quiet, clearly gathering his thoughts. "You can do this stuff really well but you do it...reluctantly. She wants it. Needs it. She sees personal interaction as competition, I guess. Everything is a contest, a battle of wills. No conscience. All seduction.

"She tried...well, she asked...well, she demanded...to sleep with me yesterday. Trailed me all the way to my room then she pushed me against the door and sloppy-kissed me. She straight-up propositioned me." His ears tinged red. "When I said no, she slapped me, told me to keep my hands to myself. She stormed off."

Sarah looked at the floor as she asked the next questions. "Why refuse her, James? I mean, she's beautiful, and she was willing. And it seems to be what everyone here spends their free time doing."

James shrugged yet again. "Not everyone. There are lots of reasons, Sarah. But here's one. Whatever else was true, she didn't really want _me_ , not even just physically. She wanted to sleep with me to prove a point to _you_ , about you. That she could affect me more than you did in the exercise in class...I'm not going to be a mark on someone's tally, no matter how beautiful she is. Besides, she's like the _Queen Mary..._ "

Sarah's puzzlement showed on her face. James gave a small laugh, then mimicked a cry: "All aboard!"

They both laughed. Sarah knew, and she could tell that James knew, there was nothing romantic between them. But they could be friends, maybe they already were. And Sarah needed a friend. She needed one in the worst possible way. For the first time since she fastening her seatbelt on Graham's plane _,_ Sarah did not feel completely alone.

ooOoo

Graham's barely veiled threat about _excelling_ had not been lost on Sarah. And so began a series of months that were the most confusing and unhappy of Sarah's life. Her power of focus, always strong, always very strong, she turned on her classes. She became a laser, no diffusion, no distractions, nothing else allowed. She was unsure how to be, who to be, and so she embraced an ideal of _professionalism_ that she created for herself, devoting herself to spycraft with an intense, almost religious devotion. She was determined to be the consummate spy. _That_ would satisfy Graham; _that_ would be her excelling; _that_ would keep her dad safe.

Her new look meant that she eclipsed Hannah as the beauty of the class. She was now surrounded by men, often pawing at her - all with agendas only too clear. She was seventeen; she had her fair share of hormones. But there were two problems.

One, she had no time for men, and, two, the men were not interested in anything beyond bedding her. That was built into the _mores_ of the Farm. Hooking up was fine; emotional attachment was not. Sarah had given away her first kiss; she did not want to give _that_ away to a man who would leave shortly afterward and for whom the only effect of what happened would be a series of high-fives from his buddy recruits later. So, Sarah crouched behind the need to excel, behind her professionalism. She simply did not react to being hit on. She never shut anyone down because she never allowed anyone to get started. She just did not react or respond. She went on like nothing had happened, in part because she was completely at a loss about how to respond if she acted like anything had happened. She had no idea how to refuse gracefully, if she would have been allowed to, and so she pretended no offer had been made.

That behavior caused her stock to plummet fast among the male recruits, and, as a result, among the female ones too, almost as fast as her stock had risen. _Bull market to bear market - as her Dad said often when their fortunes changed_. She went from being the 'It Girl' for a few weeks, to being actively resented for refusing to take part in the 'rituals' of the Farm. Soon, she had a nickname: _The Ice Queen_. She found out (James told her, reluctantly) that none of the men had coined the name. It had been a 'gift' from Hannah. The nickname became a prophecy. Knowing that she was being called that made her more focused on classes, less responsive to overtures, if that was possible.

She felt herself frosting over, layers of hard rime crusting thickly over her skin and freezing her heart. She felt unreachable, unresponsive, frozen.

Nothing moved her but spycraft: Excel. _Excel_. **Excel**.

The callouses inside her lips had vanished, but outward callouses were forming all over.

She had vaulted to the top in almost all of her classes. Her confidence in her abilities was beginning to grow. It was as though her father had spent years pre-qualifying her for spy work. With the exception of martial arts, she had a head start in almost everything they were being taught to do. Some version of it, perhaps rudimentary or scaled-down, had featured in her con life with her father. And she was finding that the IQ score in her file was not a lie: she was brighter and more retentive than Hannah. Her mind worked by sure, intuitive leaps. She rarely had to take steps or to work through false conclusions. Usually, she would be confronted by a problem, she would feel a momentary blankness, and then the solution would simply be before her mind, with no sense that she had worked it out. She knew that part of it was that she had been working on versions of these problems for years with her father, solving them without understanding that that was what she was doing. But part of it was just the manifestation of a gift.

She had never really excelled in school, but that was because of the pressures of her twisted _no-home_ life, the lies and the worry about never returning the next day. The only classes she had done well in were the foreign language classes she had taken - French and Spanish. She had learned both very quickly, and was able to speak in them, non-haltingly, in just a matter of weeks. For some reasons, languages made sense to her. But that they did always seemed ironic to her, since, although she could speak them so quickly, she had so little to say in either of them or in English. Graham had arranged for her to get extra tutoring in both languages, and that took up much of her allotment of free time. She spent little time with the other recruits, and her absence further alienated her from them and them from her. But perhaps the worst thing was that it became known, somehow, that Langston Graham, the Director, had a special interest in her, that she was his project. _Director's Pet._ Once that became generally accepted, no one in the class was eager to spend time with her of any sort.

No one except James. They could find little time to spend together, but, when they did, the Ice Queen disappeared. She was able to relax and remember who she had been before all this had started, even if who she had been still left a great deal to be desired. Who she had been was better than the emotionless robot she felt herself slowly becoming. The distance her father had created between her and her feelings seemed to be growing daily. The distance only seemed crossable when she was with James. They were friends. She told him almost nothing about herself, of course. She spent most of the time they were together without speaking. But she listened to him as she had listened to Gale, and she managed to say enough for him to know that she did count him her friend.

James' life had been overwhelmingly...normal. His parents were still together, still in love with each other. His father ran a successful insurance firm. His mother worked as a nurse. They'd been good parents, making time for their son, their only child, and supporting him. They had been puzzled by his decision to join the CIA - but they supported that too, despite being puzzled. Sarah liked most when James would tell her about average days during high school, nothing days on which he woke up, drove his car to school, sat through classes, and ended the day hanging out with friends before heading home to dinner with his parents. Sarah had never known days like that, and hearing about them made her long for a different life, long for her own life to have found a different path than the one it had, the one that had lead her to the Farm.

Her time with James became less enjoyable, however, when it became clear that James was slowly failing his classes, falling farther and farther behind. He respected the ends being taught, but he found the means distasteful. He had a hard time lying at all, much less lying believably. He hated manipulating other people; it went against the grain for him. He was genuine through-and-through. The seduction class was quickly becoming the worst of the disasters, and even with some coaching from Sarah, he was continuing to lose ground.

Sarah's coaching was less than whole-hearted. The thought of being the person who taught James Unroe to lie was a thought she despised. She knew she was a hopeless case; her father had seen to that. James was not. She was half-hoping he would leave of his own accord, refuse to change in the way the Farm demanded - although the thought of being there without him depressed her to the point of abject tears. Her own dividedness where James was concerned ended up causing her to seek him out less often, and he became less and less of a presence in her Farm life. Eventually, instead of being forced out, he dropped out. Sarah hated herself for it, but she did not find him to say goodbye. She watched him get in a taxi from an upstairs window, and she kept the cab in view until it went through the gate, taking her only friend from her. She brushed away tears and considered, not for the first time, calling Gale. But as happened each time, the thought of having to tell Gale where she was, why she disappeared, of having to admit to her life, kept her from making the call. She wanted to forget that she had a past. What was the good of remembering it when it had led, inexorably, _here_? _One line._

And so the months passed, whether at a crawl or at a sprint, Sarah could not say. Her days were too busy, her life too uncomfortable and unhappy, to decide on an answer. Graham was thrilled with her work. He had visited fairly often and kept close tabs on her progress. Her father was safe.

And during those months, setting aside the time she spent with James, Sarah felt herself closing up and closing off. She spoke so rarely that the sound of her own voice sometimes confused her. There was so little for Sarah to look forward to, so little of her life ahead that seemed her own to lead, that she taught herself to live in inexpectancy: hoping for nothing, wishing for nothing, dreaming of nothing. She set her sights on nothing, except on the range. The little meaning she could squeeze out of her days was to be found in doing well what she was being trained to do. And so that gradually became her focus. She demanded ever-increasing focus and precision from herself. She would not be distracted. To become distracted would mean to face the spent shell her life was destined to be. She had no illusions about her life or her life expectancy. She wanted to forget she had a future. What good could come of it, of her? She would keep breathing until she stopped. And that would be the end. She was a tool. She would live a tool's life. _One line._

ooOoo

Graduation was a little over a week away. Classes were winding down. The final section of the seduction class was about to begin: _Disengagement_.

On the syllabus, the final section was about how to break ties with those you had manipulated, how to burn a mark or an asset, how to extricate yourself from situations the manipulation might create. Sarah took her seat in the back, now chosen not to hide but to keep everyone else in view. She sat up straight, staring at the blackboard in the front of the room, studiously avoiding the hateful stare of Hannah. She knew Hannah was talking about her to the man seated next to her, but Sarah ignored it, or pretended to. She and Hannah now never spoke. Hannah had stopped the campaign to shock Sarah, keeping her clothes on in the room and going elsewhere for her liaisons. Hannah had been reduced to a campaign of misinformation, giving Sarah nicknames and spreading lies about her among the other recruits. Hannah had campaigned well. Virtually no one wanted anything to do with Sarah. Few acknowledged her at all, hardly any ever spoke. She was the object of a simmering resentment and envy. Hannah's vision of her had become the vision of the entire group of recruits. Even after her make-over, in part because of her make-over, she was less popular at the Farm than she had been in high school. _Go figure._

The instructor walked in and took up his usual post at the lectern. He glanced around the class, his eyes lingering for perhaps a split second longer on Sarah than on anyone else.

"Ms. Walker, please stay after class for a moment." Sarah nodded, even as she saw the ripple of reaction among the other recruits, centering on Hannah.

The instructor shuffled his notes and began.

"The point of what I have been teaching you is, briefly, this: how to make another human being dependent on you while not becoming likewise dependent on that human being. I hope all of you understand how deeply unnatural that structure is. We are dependent creatures - that shows the moment we are born. Unlike other mammals, who are born already able to do much that will characterize them when they mature, we are born indeterminate, able to do almost nothing that will characterize us when mature. We depend on others to live and to learn, to become human. We become human largely through the kindness of others who have become human.

"I mention this because I want you to realize that when we find a person depending on us, say, trusting us, our natural impulse it to return that, to depend on the person, to trust them. It works the other way around, too. When we trust, we want to be trusted. Dependence is, by nature, a form of mutuality.

"So, when we talk of disengagement, as we will in these final classes, our focus is not just on how to contend with the dependency of the mark or the asset on you, but how to contend with your dependency on the mark or asset. And, mark my words, no matter what story you tell yourself about how independent you are, about how well you can live in splendid isolation, or about how much you loathe the mark or asset, you will find yourself - against your will, perhaps - developing dependencies on him or her. Disengaging is as much about managing yourself as it is about managing the mark or asset.

"I wish I had some technique to teach you that would keep you from developing these dependencies, but there is no technique for retrofitting human nature. We are what we are. All I can do is warn you. I am sure your other instructors have taught you the byword: _Spies don't fall in love._ As a slogan, a warning to yourself, that is fine. As a claim, it is simply false.

"Of course spies fall in love. No one is in complete control of his or her emotional life. Love happens to you, sometimes against your will. (Think of the stick-in-the-mud Mr. Darcy and his disastrous proposal to Elizabeth - those of you who have read a book.)" Laughter. "Spies do fall in love. The problem is that they often have to burn the ones they love, or abandon them, or lie to them, or all of the above. This is a brutal, unnatural life. Don't lie to yourself about that…It has its rewards and its satisfactions, but don't lie to yourself about its costs; that will only make them worse, steeper..."

When the lecture ended, Sarah swam upstream against the current of students leaving the room and approached the instructor. He looked at her for a moment, his expression unreadable.

"Ms. Walker, Director Graham is here and wants to see you. He asked me to tell you and to encourage you to drop by his office now, if possible."

"Yes, sir."

He continued to look at her. "You have been the best student I have had. Teaching you has made me think harder about what I teach than I have in a long time." He paused but offered no further explanation. He did hold her gaze, but she knew she was as unreadable as he. He had taught her well; so had her father. "I have one thing to say to you here at the end. And I will say it now since I don't know if I will have another chance. _Don't forget, the job is only pretend, it is only a cover, if there is_ a reality _that stands in contrast to it. No appearance without reality._ " After a pause, he held out his hand. She shook it and he added: "Good luck." He looked away from her, gathered his papers and slipped past her. As he left the room, he called out without turning back, warning in his tone. "Don't forget about Graham."

"How could I?" Sarah muttered, _sotto voce_. She went back to her seat, grabbed her few things, and went to face the Director.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for Chapter 4, "Down the Rabbit Hole". Graham and the first mission.

My guess about Sarah's titles, "Ice Queen" and "Wild-Card Enforcer," is that she 'earned' them at different points in her pre-Burbank career. No doubt, the first eventually morphed in such a way that it complemented the second, but my guess is that it was the earlier of the two and so, initially, distinct.

Thoughts? Reactions? Leave me a review, please.


	4. Down the Rabbit Hole (One)

**A/N1** We are about to leave the Farm. Our heroine is about to embark on her first mission. But first, she graduates without ceremony and chats with Graham. Then she boards a plane.

Thanks for the thoughtful reviews and PMs. I've been trying to respond to everyone. If I haven't gotten to you yet, hang tight. I will.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FOUR (Part One)

 _Down the Rabbit Hole_

* * *

Men made out of monkeys  
Men made into mice  
Happy days are here again  
And all the drinks half price  
A girl with a trick and a man with a calling  
Trying to make a living out of your downfalling  
Trying to make a living out of anything at all  
Didn't they teach you anything except how to be cruel  
In that charm school?  
\- Elvis Costello, _Charm School_

* * *

 _Chapter Four Prelude_

 **Recruit Psychological Evaluation**

 **Exit Interview Report**

 **Central Intelligence Agency**

 **Psychologist:** D. Everett Cottinwind

 **Recruit:** Sarah Walker

 **Age:** 22

The recruit is a tall, attractive blonde, Sarah Walker. Her paperwork places Walker's age at 22. I suspect that she is younger. How much, I cannot tell. She seems too young to be here, and yet, at times, she seems too old to be here. She is a puzzling recruit.

She is ranked at the top of her class of recruits. And it is not just that she achieved that ranking by _cumulative_ results. She at the top of _all_ her classes. She was behind early in a few but she caught up quickly. She is palpably smart, gifted. But she seems in many ways inexperienced, almost innocent. She works to hide that and is mostly successful. She can make herself hard, although she is not hard.

Walker is difficult to evaluate. She is silent. Not just quiet. She does not speak unless forced to do so, and then she speaks in the fewest words. She does not talk _around_ questions she does not want to answer, periphrastically. She just holds her peace.

I could learn little about her directly. The way she refused to answer certain questions makes me sure that her home life was bad. While I do not suspect physical abuse, emotional abuse (perhaps unintentional, perhaps well-meant) is likely.

Walker is a young woman of deep, strong emotions - but she is in denial of that fact. From her point of view, she is emotionless - or she wants to be. She works hard to benumb herself or, if that fails, simply to ignore her emotions.

She clearly has had little outlet for her emotions, it seems, and it is likely her emotions were treated as a weakness when she previously attempted to find outlets for them. She has compensated by allowing her emotions only internal expression, an internal expression that she studiously attempts to ignore. While she is outwardly impassive, there are passions storming inwardly. There are 'tells' in her eyes and hands, in her bodily comportment, in small things, but things noticeable to a trained psychologist.

Such resolute suppression of emotion is not unheard of among recruits. But it is most common among long-term agents, especially deep cover or wetwork agents, and is often preludial to burnout.

I have been asked to consider her appropriateness for deep cover and for wet work.

I have reservations about both that I want on the record.

Walker's personal 'division' is likely to be worsened by deep cover work or by wetwork. She already shows signs of a 'split personality', to use a category that lay people know: she offloads emotional burdens off onto another self, located in the past or future, or in some nebulous 'distance', so that her present self can attend to the demands of the moment. But this kind of offloading proves always to be unstable. The emotional burdens - her baggage, if you will - does not decrease, it only increases, and its coercive force over her present self also increases, so that it requires more and more energy for her to maintain the 'distance' between the burdened and the disburdened self. I should make clear that I am not _diagnosing_ her with a split personality (Walker is not psychologically ill). Perhaps it would be better to say she suffers from depersonalization that could easily become chronic - but again I am noting a worrisome tendency, not offering an official diagnosis.

While I rate Walker as psychologically tough (her likely past has made her so) and while I do not doubt she can withstand the rigors of deep cover or wetwork, I question whether she should be assigned such. Her tendency to know and, at the same time, to refuse to know, will almost certainly be intensified by months of lying and cover, or by the consequences of wetwork.

One of the few revealing things Walker said during our interview was about a dream. I asked if she dreamed. She refused to answer and I prepared to change the topic. Then she admitted it: "Yes." I waited.

"I keep having the same dream. I am descending a rope in complete darkness. The rope itself glows, like those Halloween glow necklaces. I go down the rope slowly, hand under hand, but the rope simply disappears into the sadness. I never reach the bottom."

Walker seemed immediately upset that she had shared the dream - not upset that she shared it with _me_ , but that she shared it with _herself_. I believe she had hidden the dream from herself until she told it. She was unresponsive through the final few minutes of the interview.

Walker seems to regard the knowledge she has of herself as a secret and to want to keep it secret from herself. This is psychologically unworkable; it will create problems for her if it continues.

I will not dogmatize about the interpretation of her dream; it seems to me that the likely interpretation is obvious.

Walker could be an asset to the CIA as an analyst or even as an agent, so long as her assignments were carefully chosen. While her skill set makes her potentially as effective as any agent I have interviewed, her history, her difficulties and her deep but unexpressed unhappiness with her life make it likely that deep cover or wetwork will often be torturous for her, and potentially disastrous. Although she is rightly proud of her proficiencies, takes some satisfaction in it, Walker is unlike most of our recruits: Walker does not _need_ this kind of work, this kind of life. It does not supply some existential deficiency in her, offer her some form of manipulatory satisfaction she craves. In fact, _much the opposite_ : this work, especially the work envisioned for her, will worsen her deficiencies, will deprive her of lasting satisfactions.

Despite her closure, I like this young woman. Why should we undertake to make her unhappy when there are other recruits, almost as skilled, who we could make happy, at least, happy in their way?

 **Psychologist:** D. Everett Cottinwind, PhD

 **Director:**

* * *

 _Chapter Four_

Graham's assistant showed Sarah into his office. He was holding and reading - really, staring in disapproval at - an official-looking piece of paper. He rotated around and fed it into a shredder when he saw her. Satisfied that it was destroyed, he turned back around, motioned for her to sit down.

"Sarah, welcome." She nodded but did not speak. "I have talked with your instructors. All agree that you have effectively completed your coursework for them. Since that is so, and since, if you will forgive me for saying it, there will be no one who will be attending your graduation, I am going to have you forgo the ceremony so that you can undertake your first mission as an agent. Is that okay with you?" He seemed to be asking but Sarah knew he was not. She nodded again, tighter than before. He continued. "I am...we are sending you to Germany."

Sarah finally spoke; she could not help herself; she blurted it out. "Germany? I don't know German. I have never been out of the US - not even to Mexico or to Canada." She was shocked, angry.

He gave her a hard look. "I know. But you have a knack for language; you will pick it up. Your cover is as an American college student gone abroad, to study at the University of Leipzig. Not speaking German will be an aid to your cover, and, we believe, an aid to your mission itself. I believe you play the violin?"

Sarah resentment rose higher, her self-control overcome. "No," she said with a small smirk, "I carried a submachine gun back and forth to school in a violin case…"

Graham's look became even harder, menacing, almost cruel. "Enough. I don't know who told you that you were funny, but you are not."

Sarah sat silent for a moment, chastised and hurt, then spoke haltingly, back under her own control, and back under intimidation by Graham. "It is...normal...to just have an agent...skip graduation and...go immediately into the field?"

" _Agent Walker_ \- let me be the first to call you that - little about you is normal. Little about you ever will be. You've been called to a different sort of life, one that will not be normal, not even by CIA standards. You see, I have a special plan for you, a plan to capitalize on your remarkable gifts. But before I can implement my plan in full, I need you to prove yourself. If you prove...trustworthy...in small things, you will eventually be trusted with...large things. But enough of that for now. _Sufficient unto the day is the mission thereof_. A bit of spy wisdom for you, Agent Walker."

He picked up a file from his desk. "Take this with you. Mission specifics are in it, including reports and evaluations from analysts at Langley and from our people on the ground in Leipzig. Your flight is scheduled for tomorrow morning. You will fly to Frankfurt and then on to Leipzig." He handed her the file.

"A packet will arrive at your room later today with your passport, other forms of ID, and credit cards, and cash and a phone. Do you have any special request for a sidearm?"

"An S&W 5906." She had been using one on the range and she liked it.

Graham smiled at her immediate answer. "Then that is what you will get." He made a note to himself, bending down to scribble on a piece of paper.

"You will have a handler since this is your first mission. And it will be someone you know: the man who was your father's drinking buddy, the man you knew as 'Donald'. Call me after he establishes contact and gets you set up in Leipzig. You'll be staying on Markgrafenstrasse, near the center of town, in a modest apartment there. Good hunting, Agent Walker. I have high...hopes." He grabbed something off his desk and circled around to face her. He handed it to her. Her agent badge. She slipped it into the front of the file. He extended his hand.

Whatever Sarah felt in that moment, she pushed it down deep, refused it, but Graham seemed to expect her to speak, so she did, quietly, making herself smile. "Thank you, sir."

ooOoo

Walking back to her room, Sarah tried to catch up with herself. She was supposed to have another handful of days of classes, then a few days off, then graduation. Instead, she had been declared finished and given a mission, one that would begin in a handful of hours. _Another country. Germany._ She had no time to consider, reflect. Even the next few hours before sleep would have to be spent going over the file, preparing for the mission and for meeting - re-meeting - 'Donald'.

It was all happening so fast. She felt lost, disoriented. Why her for this mission? What did Graham mean by "special plan"? She had no answers. She told herself to just stop asking the questions. This was her job now, her life. Pleasing Graham meant safeguarding her father. She had no choice, as usual. _One line._ A razor's edge to walk. No deviation possible, any wandering of her attention and she would be dead or her dad would be - or both.

Still, Germany. She was going to _another country_. _Overseas_. She was a _CIA agent_. Maybe it would all work out. Maybe it would be okay. She was terrified, but she was excited too.

ooOoo

Standing in line to go through Customs in Frankfurt, Sarah mentally reviewed what she knew about her mission. 'Donald' would supply more information when she got to Leipzig. The plane trip there was less than an hour. She was hoping she could sleep a little. She had spent the eight hours or so to Frankfurt going through the file over and over again. Getting details tucked away in her mind, memorizing the basic layout of the city and especially the streets and neighborhoods near her on Markgrafenstrasse. Her instructors had made it clear to her that she had to know _where_ she was and _when_ it was _constantly_. The difference between life and death for an agent could be something as simple as remembering or forgetting a street name, or losing track of the time. Luckily, her years conning with her father had required that she be good at those things, and various mnemonic tricks she had learned at the Farm made her even better at them.

The real challenge was in understanding the mark. Sebastian Fritz Sudau. He was a student at the music school, a player of both the harpsichord and the organ. That certainly made him sound harmless. But he was a closeted radical, a sympathizer with the East Germany that had been, and that he wanted to be again. He had developed ties with a terrorist group, Eastward-moving remnants of the Red Army Faction. They had no name but they planned to earn one soon. Sebastian had been identified by 'Donald' and the analysts as the weak link, her way to infiltrate the group. Her assignment was simple: infiltrate the group and (1) identify the planned target of attack and (2) Identify as many members of the group as possible.

Sebastian, it turned out, had a girlfriend about whom he appeared to be serious. A willowy brunette with a penchant for berets named Christiana. That was good news in one way: Sarah's seduction angle was not going to be romantic; she would not have to try to become Sebastian's girlfriend. But it was bad news in another way: she would have to find a different way of getting into Sabastian's confidence - with another woman in the picture. Music seemed to be the obvious play ( _no pun intended_ ) but she was no great violinist. Sebastian, however, was evidently a talented organist. Still, even if she was not likely to be playing duets with him, she could use their shared interest in music as her infiltration tool. She just needed to engineer a natural-seeming meeting with him, or, better, with him and his girlfriend.

It was her turn to go to the Customs desk. The man there took her passport without really even looking at her. He did not return her slight smile or soft hello. He punched some keys on his computer, stared at the screen, then aggressively stamped her passport. Her first stamp. Her first mission. _Down the rabbit hole._

ooOoo

She climbed down the movable stairs to the Leipzig airport tarmac. It was a cool, Spring day, a hint of moisture in the air, making it feel colder than it would have otherwise, especially since the sun was shining. She grabbed her carry-on from the line of them beside the plane and headed into the terminal. It was a small airport. She was unsure how 'Donald' would make contact.

It turned out that he didn't. She was greeted by a woman in a chauffeur's uniform who had a small sign that read "S. Walker'. As soon as Sarah identified herself, the woman folded the sign in two and put it in her jacket. "Follow me." She turned and began to walk away quickly.

Sarah was dressed as a college student, a traveling college student. Her hair was in a long ponytail. She had on a plain black sweatshirt, jeans, and leather sneakers. Besides the carry-on she was pulling, she had a backpack on her shoulders. She looked her age. In this case, that was a good thing.

When they got to the small parking lot, the woman opened the trunk of the car and gestured for Sarah to put her things inside. For the first time since she had landed, Sarah suddenly felt like an agent. Apprehension washed over her. She would have felt better if there had been a password or some way of knowing that the woman was supposed to be picking her up. But Sarah knew she could not just stand there in the parking lot, and the woman seemed uninterested in conversation. Sarah went with her gut: she put her carry-on in the trunk. She slipped into the rear seat while the woman got in front. In a moment, they were headed toward Leipzig.

The woman looked at Sarah in the rearview mirror. "Agent Walker, I am Martina. Donald sent me. If you put your hand beneath the passenger seat, you will find a package of items."

Sarah did as she was instructed. She found a large, heavy envelope beneath the seat. Inside was a key (presumably to her apartment), a gun (the S&W she had requested, with extra shells), and holster of knives and a stack of euros, She quickly loaded the gun and then strapped the knives to her calf. She stuffed the euros into the small pocket of her backpack, along with the key.

"We are about fifteen minutes out. Please relax. Donald is to meet you at the apartment. In fact, he should already be there." Martina's tone made it clear she was finished with conversation. That was okay with Sarah. She concentrated on the roads as they passed, putting mental pictures to remembered names.

After a bit, they turned off of Martin Luther Ring and onto Markgrafenstrasse. It was a narrow street, bordered on one side by open restaurant umbrellas, and leading at the opposite end toward the city center. Martina stopped in front of an old building with very heavy wooden doors. She said nothing, but she popped the trunk. Sarah shrugged and muttered "Thanks" and got out. She grabbed her carry-on and headed to the door. It was locked. The key opened it. Strangely, the door, unlocked, swung into the building, to a small landing in front of a flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs was an old elevator, encased in wire mesh painted milky, olive green. She looked more closely at her key and noticed that it was engraved with a number, '39". She got on the elevator, deciding to ride it just out of curiosity, ignoring the beautiful wooden steps that wound around the open elevator shaft like a serpent around a tree. _Eve._ Sarah shuddered and then the elevator did too as it came to a stop. She got out and went through a set of doors. Apartment 39 was immediately to the right. She slipped the key in the lock, turned it, and went inside.

ooOoo

She stepped into a small kitchen, one end covered in appliances on the bottom, cabinets on the top. A door to the bathroom opened on the side. There was a small table with two chairs in the middle of the room. On the other end, the one nearest where she was standing, was a large double armoire, two pairs of doors, one with a full-length mirror on each of the pair. Built into one end of the armoire was a rack for hanging coats and a small seat for putting on or taking off shoes. That led into a living room with a desk on one side and a couch on the other, two small matching armchair between them. The living room was divided from the bedroom by a low, long bookcase. The walls were bare. A violin case was in a corner of the living room.

'Donald' was sitting in the desk chair, his handgun on the desk in front of him. He was looking at Sarah intensely. She finally realized that he was not sure it was her. He had last seen her when she was younger still, and with her old hair and braces. She smiled at him and that seemed to do the job. His gaze changed; he knew her; he relaxed.

Sitting there in the sunlight, Sarah got her first good look at him. He was older, maybe early forties, handsome in a guy-next-door way, with a quick smile. He was thin but not skinny, and he gave the impression of being strong without appearing particularly muscular.

"So…'Sarah', right?"

She shrugged one shoulder. "'Donald', right?" He shrugged both shoulders.

He studied her for a few seconds, then he seemed to remember something. "Graham told me to tell you that all is well Stateside and that you should call him after I have briefed you."

"Okay," she said. Then there was a silence between them. Donald seemed to have something on his mind but he also seemed reluctant to share it. Then she saw him make a decision.

"Sarah, I'm sorry. I was excited about you and I told Graham about you, but I never imagined...I mean that I can do the math, I know how old you were, what grade you were in when I met your dad and you. I never imagined Graham would recruit you...ahead of schedule."

Sarah looked down at the tile floor. "It's okay, Donald." _If I am Sarah, he's Donald._ "What's done is done. I just have to make the best of it."

"Yeah, but still…" He sounded like he wanted to say more but was unsure how to continue. Finally, as she looked up at him, she saw him give up. He changed topics. "So we should talk about the mission."

He gave her more recent information than the analysts had, including information about Sabastian's daily habits. He and his girlfriend ate breakfast across from the University Library. That would be as good a place as any for Sarah to try to establish contact. Donald gestured to the violin case in the corner. "They tell me it's a good one. Worth some money. Likely it will impress Sebastian, if he sees it. Try to return it intact, please." He paused.  
"Have you played recently?"

Sarah shook her head. "No, not since I before I left San Diego. I need to make myself stay up until a normal bedtime tonight anyway, to minimize the jet lag, so maybe I can practice a little."

"Yes, these apartments are often used by music students, that's one reason we chose them. So long as you aren't playing in the wee hours, no one will complain. There's some sheet music in the case. Graham suggested it."

"Let me know tomorrow if you have made contact. Here's my number. Graham gave me yours. Be careful out there. I don't think that Sebastian is dangerous, really. He's just a deluded hothead. But that sort is hard to predict. Christiana, however, strikes me as the violent type, violently jealous, in particular." He followed that remark with a pointed look. Sarah dropped her chin to acknowledge it. "But the people he's mixed up with, they are just violent plain and simple. Don't forget that."

Donald crossed in front of her and reached the door. As he took the handle, he turned back. "There's a University ID in the desk. You are enrolled as an auditor - full access, no homework. Oh, there's food and stuff in the refrigerator. The restaurant across the street is pretty good, if you can stomach a German-take on Italian food. The coffee shop around the corner is the best in the neighborhood, and they have incredible chocolate croissants; they rival ones you would get in France."

"Huh. I've really never had a chocolate croissant. Maybe I will try one."

He grinned and stepped into the hallway. "Watch it. They're addictive." The door closed and she heard him walk away.

ooOoo

Sarah put down the violin. Luckily, Graham had chosen sheet music that was a good match for her skills. She was rusty, and at first, the bow and the neck had felt alien, unattached to her. But after a few passes through one of the songs, they had started to feel like parts of her again, and instead of whining sounds, she began to make music. That had brought on tears, however, partly of joy, because she loved music and had missed it, although classical was all that she really knew, and partly of sorrow: the jet lag was catching up to her, sinking her emotions; but beyond that physical cause, her aloneness had caught up to her too.

She had spent many nights alone, waiting for her father to return. But she had always had the comforting thought that he was out there, nearby somewhere, that he could somehow save her if necessary. But she was in Germany. He was in the States, in a cage. She was truly on her own, a stranger in a strange land. She was also wide awake. She had practiced through the deep sleepiness that had overtaken her a couple of hours before. Now that sleepiness was gone and there were no signs of its return.

She was a sleepless stranger in a strange land.

She put the violin in its case and climbed into the bed. She looked up at the ceiling and began to play through scenarios for tomorrow, her attempt to establish contact with Sebastian.

After a little while, since the time difference would allow it, she got up and called Graham. She had not really wanted to but felt she was required to do it. Surprisingly, he seemed not to be too interested in mission details, and to be more interested in how she was doing. She was moved a bit, and surprised a lot, by his apparently genuine concern.

ooOoo

In the early morning sunlight, she crossed Simpson Platz, taking a moment to walk across the undulating, grassy area, and then turned down Beethovenstrasse, a tourist for a moment. The trees were blooming. Bikes lined both sides of the street. She reached the library and saw the restaurant (more like a campus cafe) where Sebastian and his girlfriend habitually had breakfast. She could not see them through the large windows, so she sat down on the library steps to wait. She was dressed much as she had been the day before. She had put on Plano glasses. She knew that she faded into the background. Hardly anyone - only a couple of men - even looked in her direction as they walked past, continuing down the street or up the steps into the library.

Then Sarah saw Sebastian - and Christiana. They were coming up the street from the opposite direction, probably (she consulted her mental map) coming from the park. Given Christiana's posture at Sebastian's side, molded to his body, her beret leaning against his shoulder, Sarah guessed their morning stroll through the park had been romantic. Envy gripped Sarah hard for a second. She wanted romance in her life, longed for it, but it now seemed farther away from her than ever. Her life with her father had kept her from having a boyfriend; her life with Graham threatened to make that continue into the indefinite future, perhaps to make it permanent.

She made herself stand up and she crossed the street, entering the restaurant by entering the large glass doors at the front of the building that housed it (a classroom building) and turning left. Sebastian and Christiana were in line. Sarah got in line behind them, separated by a couple of customers.

As was true in the coffee shop she'd gone to this morning, the hum of conversation in the place was low, far lower than in the States. She'd eaten two of the chocolate croissants Donald had mentioned and warned her about, so she wasn't really hungry.

But she had an idea pop into her mind, and idea of how to meet Sebastian and Christiana, low-key and natural-seeming.

Sebastian and Christiana got their coffee and salami sandwiches and sat down. Sarah got to the register, then muttered out loud, "Damn it." She got out of line and walked to the table where Sebastian and Christiana had deposited themselves, their coffee and sandwiches. Sarah stepped to the table and smiled in slightly ruffled distress.

"Do you speak English?" She knew they both did. Sebastian looked at her with a friendly but guarded smile. Christiana looked at her with a frank, appraising frown. "I don't have any cash, and I don't know how to pay."

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for Chapter 5, "Down the Rabbit Hole (Part Two)". More of the Leipzig mission.


	5. Down the Rabbit Hole (Two)

**A/N1** The middle chapter of this three-chapter mission. Our heroine tries to adjust to the straits and compromises of her new life, her first mission.

These are difficult chapters to write. After this mission ends (one more chapter), we fast-forward in time to another mission, maybe the saddest of all. Bear with me; things will get more upbeat after that - but at a certain cost for our heroine. I appreciate those who have stuck with this and who will continue to stick with it.

Even more than with other stories I have written, I would love to know your responses to this. If you can, please drop me a line. I am trying hard here to take what canon gives me and to think it through as a series of events, decisions, and actions.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FIVE

 _Down the Rabbit Hole (Part Two)_

* * *

I've got a notion  
I've got an angle  
Take your dreams and promises  
And put them through the mangle…  
Didn't they teach you anything except how to be cruel  
In that charm school?  
\- Elvis Costello, _Charm School_

* * *

Sebastian had proven to be easy to get to know, easy to manipulate, at least when Christiana did not have his reins in her hands The trouble was that she almost always did.

Sarah had managed to parley her interruption of their breakfast into a shared meal and a quick-developing camaraderie. _Eating when I am not hungry. My life belongs more to my cover than to me. There is hardly a_ me _, anyway, I guess._ Christiana was suspicious of Sarah and kept looking at her when she thought Sarah wasn't paying attention, as if trying to compare herself to Sarah, Sarah to herself, as competitors.

As a result, Sarah was careful to do nothing in response to Sebastian that could have been construed as flirting. She even made sure to acknowledge a couple of times that Sebastian and Christiana were a couple - and even to giggle a little about how _cute_ _they were together_. After a bit, Christiana seemed mollified, if still cautious.

Careful not to overplay her hand, Sarah left the table when she was done, but not before asking them where she could go to get rosin for her violin bow. Sebastian seemed excited to find out that she played; Christiana seemed to like it too, maybe because it seemed likely to guarantee Sarah would stay in the Friend Zone where Sebastian was concerned. A little more of Christiana cautioned had seemed to vanish upon hearing the news.

Sarah spent the rest of the morning and the early afternoon in her apartment, taking apart her gun and cleaning it even though it was brand new. She wanted to be sure she could count on it. She checked the edge on her knives too, making sure they would do their job. She went to the music shop

Sebastian told her about and bought some rosin. She wanted to be sure she had made good on her request. _Covers are lies built out of manipulated misunderstood truths: so said her seduction instructor at the Farm: be sure that you are who your cover says you are unless you are sure you are alone, and even then be who your cover says you are if you can. But don't forget who you really are._ Her cover was as Rebecca Montague. She'd been a Rebecca before. She had had so many names, so many identities. But she had never been herself, not that she could remember clearly, anyway. _How can a cover be a cover when there is no one real who is being...covered? Who am I?_

ooOoo

The violin Graham supplied was a good one and Sarah kept practicing. She spent the next day in her apartment again. Donald stopped by to check on how things were going and seemed happy with her progress; he told her he would let Graham know that things were proceeding apace.

The next day she 'ran into' Sebastian and Christiana again at breakfast time. They saw her first, or thought they did, and invited her to sit. She had brought her violin with her. Sebastian had opened the case to look at it, he seemed to think it was impressive. They invited her to go out with them that evening for dinner and drinks. Sarah was glad for the invitation - things were working out. But she had done little drinking in her time and knew she would have to be careful not to let herself get even tipsy. That could be disastrous. Her control needed to be total.

Dinner had been good. Sarah had nursed one tall Pilsner and they never seemed to notice that she had not matched them drink for drink. But they were so caught up in each other that they had to work to include her. Sebastian was enspelled by Christiana. Christiana had gotten more and more handsy with Sebastian. Eventually, Sarah judged she had gotten as much out of the dinner as she could hope for. She excused herself graciously. Christiana, while never hostile, was clearly glad when she left. Sebastian was polite but his attention was now fixated on Christiana, her handsy effect on him.

Things went on like that for another week. Casual meetings at breakfast. Lunch or dinner every couple of days. Sarah attended some lectures, including philosophy lectures being given on Marx. She made sure to buy the books for those lectures and to have them with her when she ran into the couple. She never drew attention to the books, but she began carefully to pepper her conversation with snide political remarks, directed against capitalism, particularly the run-amok version of it in the US, the inequalities, the absurd fatness of US lives. (Donald had helped her work out some of the patter. Some of it she got from the class and the reading. But most of it was just Sarah. She just knew what to say. _Words come easily to me when my mouth is not mine, when it belongs to the cover. They are never easy otherwise. Why is that?_ ) She knew that both of them had noted the remarks although neither commented directly on them.

They came to her apartment one night and she played the violin for them. She knew she wasn't great, but she also knew she was not embarrassingly bad. Sebastian, in particular, seemed charmed by her playing.

They talked later over coffee, and Christiana mentioned that she and Sebastian were part of a group interested in political topics, and they invited her to go to a meeting with them. Sarah knew that this would not be a meeting of the group she was tasked to infiltrate, but it was undoubtedly the first step.

That was good. The bad thing was that Sarah began to find herself liking Sebastian and Christiana. They liked her; they thought the three of them had become friends. Christiana was certainly not Gale. Sebastian was not James. But they were nice to her, interested in her, at least the her she was creating. _I've never created me._

Still, there had been so few friends in her life that she found herself enjoying her time with the two of them, enjoying it in a way that could complicate things down the line. She tried to make herself keep in mind that they were her marks, not her friends. The friendship was only pretended. But it wasn't only pretended, not exactly. She did like them. They liked her. It was all lies - and it was not _all_ lies.

ooOoo

The night of the meeting, Sarah was standing on the street, beneath green buds on the Spring-filled trees, waiting for Sebastian and Christiana. Only Sebastian showed up. She saw him coming up the street and waved to him. He waved back.

"Hey, Rebecca," he said. She was glad he called her by her cover name. It reminded her that she was not really going out with friends, hanging out. _Marks, Sarah, they are marks. No, not' Sarah'; think of yourself as 'Rebecca'; what's one more name? Marks, not friends, Rebecca._ "Christiana went on ahead to save us seats. The speaker tonight is popular." Sebastian seemed genuinely excited about the event.

Sarah adjusted her backpack on her shoulders and Sebastian led them away, chattering enthusiastically about the group whose meeting they were about to attend. The group had some loose affiliation with the University but was not an official University student group. Townspeople, anyone who was interested really, could attend. The group was far-left in its political leanings. Donald had gotten a file worked up on them and its known members. Sarah had all the information tucked into her head.

Sarah had known that Sebastian and Christiana were part of the group from the beginning, but it had been crucial, so Sarah thought, and Donald agreed, that they invite her to the group, not that she just show up to one of its meetings. She needed to be there with them, through them, recruited by them. It would give her a credibility that just showing up would not have done. Her ties to them, from their point of view, were prior to any mention of the group, prior to the invitation to the meeting. Her showing up needed not to seem to be her idea.

They walked for a while and then stopped at an old, well-kept building, across the street from a statue of Schiller, half-hidden behind a row of new-blossoming trees. Sebastian pushed into the revolving door and Sarah waited for it to revolve far enough for her to enter. Then they were inside. They went up a short staircase and turned into a long, tiled hallway, the floor polished to a high gleam. At the end of the hallway, a door was open, held open by a smashed cardboard box shoved under it. Voices, most speaking German, could be heard.

Graham had been right about Sarah and the language. Already, she was picking it up. Her accent was still patently American, and she could not converse with any real fluency yet, but she could manage basic contributions to conversations. She could do even more by ear. She could already understand a lot of what was being said around her. She seemed to have a knack for recognizing the basic phonological units of language, she had a knack for hearing the words as words - "heightened phonological awareness", one of her Graham-hired language tutors at the Farm called it. Whatever it was, she knew that she could _hear_ the language, even before she had remotely mastered it. From the beginning, it had never seemed like noise to her.

She could tell that much of the conversation in the lecture hall of the pointless, political sort often indulged in by intellectuals or intellectual wannabes - especially when talking to strangers of their sort. She could hear lots of names being dropped - names of people and books and places. Failed or failing attempts to impress filled the hall.

Sebastian had pushed into the crowd ahead of her, and Sarah followed in his wake. After a moment, Sarah saw Sebastian wave - and she saw Christiana return the wave from across the room.

Christiana was wearing her expected black beret, but instead of her normal long dark ponytail, she had her hair loose. Sarah had never seen her that way and was surprised how much it softened Christiana. But then Sarah noticed that the older man standing next to Christiana surreptitiously dropped his hand from her lower back, where it had been positioned when she waved. Sarah could tell that Sebastian had likely not noticed; there had been no indication that he saw anything but Christiana.

As they got to Christiana and the man, Sarah could see _something_ in Christiana's gaze - a division - and Sarah felt a hesitancy in Christiana's response to Sebastian when he leaned in to kiss her cheek. Christiana, Sarah realized, was very aware of the older man and his response to Sebastian's greeting. But Sarah could not quite decipher the situation, what it all meant, before Christiana was introducing her.

"Rebecca, this is our speaker tonight, Kurt Wiland. Dr. Kurt Wiland. I was just telling Kurt about you." The man extended a hand behind which was an unctuous smile. He was in his late 50's, of medium height, a barrelled chest beneath graying hair and a carefully trimmed beard, also graying. His light blue eyes crawled slowly from Sarah's head to her feet as he shook her hand.

"Hello, Rebecca. Very nice to meet you. You are American?"

Sarah nodded and smiled. Wiland gaze felt like it left a trail her body - his gaze a blue slug. She suppressed a shudder and kept her smile locked in place. "I am here enjoying the city, attending some classes, getting out of the... _lunacy_ of the States...enjoying some music."

"Ah, yes, Christiana told me you are a player of music, a violinist, correct?" She nodded again and tried gently to free her hand from Wiland's. He squeezed hers and kept it for a long moment. His eyes were bright and hard, filled challenge and barely hidden desire. Despite recoiling inwardly, Sarah forced herself to renew her smile.

She was unsure of the little drama being played out, but she needed to remain part of it until she understood. Wiland had not been listed as a person of interest in her files, although his name had been there, and a somewhat out of date photo, one taken when his hair was darker. He had not been attractive then, either.

Wiland did have a doctorate, from an American university, from Georgetown. He had written a couple of solid but undistinguished monographs on political philosophy. But, after that, he had changed tack and written a popular book, _Left Behind?,_ arguing for a 'renewed far-left agenda' and the book had struck a chord (despite, maybe because of, its ridiculous title) especially among university students in Germany. Since then, he had been more a public intellectual than a closeted professor, making much of his income from speaking engagements like this one.

Sebastian spoke up. "Yes, Rebecca plays well. And she's been attending lectures at the University, the special seminar on Marx." Wiland looked at Sebastian while Sebastian spoke.

Wiland let his eyes settle on Sarah again. "Ah, taste and brains and beauty. The Trinity!" Wiland seemed to think that remark was clever; he laughed in self-satisfaction. "Well," he said, smiling at himself and allowing his eyes to crawl over Sarah again, "I must take to the podium, Rebecca. I hope we can... _chat_ more after I finish." Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah saw something flit across Christiana's face. She still did not understand what was happening. She was missing something. Maybe more than one something...

ooOoo

Luckily for Sarah, Wiland lectured in English that evening. That allowed Sarah to free up a substantial part of her attention to consider the strange scene that had played out. Wiland was obviously hoping to take her, Rebecca, home after the lecture, or to be taken home by her - one way or the other to end up in her bed. Hoped - probably too weak. _Expected._

That was not going to happen, but she might have to make him think that it would. She felt her stomach clench and the skin on her arms turn to gooseflesh. Even the _thought_ of making him believe that sickened, unsteadied her.

But then she felt Christiana watching her. The look on Christiana's face was complicated - but Sarah, in a flash, finally understood it: Christiana was _procuring_ for Wiland, hoping to secure Rebecca for him. But Christiana also felt something for Wiland, so she was troubled by what she was doing. _Had she been procured for him before she began procuring for him?_ Of course, Christiana also felt something for Sebastian. It was no wonder Sarah had been lost initially in the cross-currents. She realized Sebastian was lost too, but that he had no clue he was. He did not suspect the crisscrossing currents. He trusted Christiana, loved her blindly; he admired Wiland. He thought the waters were still, clear.

Wiland was finishing. As he reached his conclusion - both the end of his argument and his closing rhetorical flourish - he looked at Sarah, gauging her reaction in particular. She gave him a generous smile and joined in the clapping with apparent enthusiasm. She could see that he was gratified by her reaction.

And then Sarah _knew_. Knew more. _Sebastian_ was not the real connection to the terrorist group she had been sent to find; _Christiana_ was. _And Wiland was involved_. Sarah wasn't sure yet exactly how, but she was sure he was. The analysts - and Donald - had missed this somehow.

As the crowd began to disperse, Wiland made his way to Sarah, Sebastian, and Christiana. His progress was slowed by eager questioners. In the interim, Sarah steeled herself, benumbed her heart. She was going to need to do this right. She was not going to be...procured...but she needed Wiland and Christiana to think that she could be, maybe even would be...eventually. But she needed to extricate herself tonight and to do so without seeming to do anything but delay the plan of Christiana and Wiland, and without doing anything to alert Sebastian to the doubleness of his girlfriend.

Wiland, finally free of hangers-on, walked to the little group and positioned himself close to Sarah. He leaned toward her and whispered, with a show of humility. "So, was it awful? Boring?"

She leaned toward him just a bit as she answered with a breathy gush. "No, no, not at all. It was...moving...and so...insightful." Wiland's grinned and she felt his hand come to rest on her arm. She felt the burn of bile in her throat but she choked it back and allowed his hand to stay in place.

"So, Rebecca, are you free this evening. I was hoping to take...all of you to dinner." Before Sarah could respond, Christiana jumped in.

"Oh, I'm sorry, but Sebastian and I have plans. Last minute plans. We'd love to come. But there is no reason why you and Rebecca could not go and enjoy yourselves." Christiana stepped away from Sebastian (who looked confused) and toward Sarah. Whispering, she added: "He's a delightful dinner companion, just a delightful...companion." She smiled in half-suggestion.

Sarah mirrored the smile but shook her head, turning from Christiana to Wiland. Keeping her voice breathy, deliberately sounding like the girls she knew in high school when they talked about celebrity crushes, she offered: "I'm so sorry, I promised a friend back home that I would call her; it's her birthday." She reached out and took Wiland's hand in hers, giving it a promising squeeze. "But I'd really like a raincheck; I'd _really_ like one." She gazed into Wiland's eyes and she knew she'd succeeded. He was hooked; he thought she was hooked. She now needed to get away cleanly. "Christiana, thanks for introducing me to Mr. Wiland."

"Kurt," Wiland stated, "call me,'Kurt'."

Sarah blinked in pleasure. _Gag. Gag. I'd rather stab him than look at him like this._ She glanced at Christiana. "...For introducing me to _Kurt_. You can give him my number." She turned back to Wiland with a final smile. "Thanks again. See you...soon, I hope. Bye, Sebastian." She nodded at Sebastian, who still looked a little confused, and put on her backpack. She headed out of the room. She could feel Wiland's eyes holding her backside as she left.

More bile.

ooOoo

Sarah got back to her apartment and rushed into the bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face and looked at herself in the small mirror beside the sink, a shaving mirror anchored to the wall. It magnified her eyes and face - magnified the unhappiness and disgust she could see staring back at her. Doing this sort of thing in seduction class, especially with James, had been easy enough. But doing it for real...well, that was hard. She now knew she could do it. She'd been successful with Sebastian and Christiana, and now with Wiland. These successes felt like losses to her, though, losses of herself, misuses of a talent. Succeeding was dissatisfying, not satisfying. Graham had talked to her of the Greater Good when they were on the plane. But it was obvious that he expected her father's plight to motivate her, not some make-believe moral abstraction.

She dried her face on a towel and walked to the couch, plopping down on it with a sigh. She was not just depressed about pretending to flirt with an arrogant terrorist, but also about what she knew about Sebastian and Christiana. She had come to like them - but she also realized that she had come to like them _as a couple_. Maybe she had allowed Sebastian and Christiana to get confused in her mind with Gale and Robert. She had no idea if Gale and Robert had worked out, but she still liked to imagine that they had, liked to imagine them dancing together, talking together at Mort's over burgers and fries, holding hands in the high school hallway…

Maybe she'd let Sebastian and Christiana step into that place in her imagination, as surrogates for Gale and Robert. Maybe.

She also knew, although she was determined not to dwell on it, that part of it was her own desire for someone to be close to, someone to love her and for her to love back. She had so little love of any form in her life, love of parents, love of friends, love of a special, romantic someone. _By Love Dispossessed. The Sarah Walker Story._ Whenever Christiana had gotten handsy with Sebastian, Sarah was painfully aware of her own empty hands.

But now she knew that Christiana was not just involved with Sebastian. Sebastian was crazy about Christiana; he was also undoubtedly of the opinion that their relationship was exclusive.

 _Um, not so much_.

Exclusive. Sarah liked the thought of that. She liked the thought of commitment, of something real and lasting. She was not ready for _that_ yet, of course, but she liked the thought of it. And the complementary thoughts of home and family - her own.

Her claim to Wiland about a friend's birthday had not been a total fabrication. Tomorrow was Sarah's birthday. She would turn eighteen. In Germany. In Leipzig. Alone. No cake, no candles, no friends, no presents. Even Graham did not know her birthday. The one listed in her file, in Sarah Walker's paperwork, was wrong.

She picked up her phone and send a coded text to Donald. She needed to talk to him, tell him what she knew. They had to make adjustments to their plan and send the analysts back to work. They needed to know more about Wiland. She needed to know more. He certainly expected to get to _know_ her, to know more about her.

ooOoo

The next day, Sarah chose not to head out to try to meet Sebastian and Christiana for breakfast. She went instead to the coffee shop nearby and bought two chocolate croissants and a large Americano. She brought the croissants and coffee back to her apartment. She found a couple of large candles forgotten in a drawer by some previous tenant. She lit them, dripping wet wax onto two saucers. She stood a candle in the cooling wax on each, holding it in place until the wax hardened. She then sang _Happy Birthday_ to herself, her voice sounding thin in the empty apartment. She ate part of a croissant but then she felt so lost that she blew out the candles, climbed back into her still-unmade bed and pulled the covers over her head. _Happy Birthday to me._

ooOoo

She was awakened in the early afternoon by her phone. She took a moment to collect herself and then she answered. As she had expected, it was Wiland...Kurt.

"Rebecca, I hope you don't mind me calling, but I have got an invitation to a last-minute soiree, a very wealthy friend of mine, and I would love to take a companion with me. Would you like to go?"

Sarah had hoped not to hear from him today - of all days. But she had expected it. The way he had looked at her when she left told her that he was not going to be able to wait. _He might have talked his friend into the soiree just in order to have an excuse to ask me out again._

She had also hoped that Donald and the analysts might have something for her before she had to re-establish contact with Wiland. No such luck. Not yet, anyway. Sarah knew there were some fashionable dress shops in walking distance; she could buy a dress that would allow her to fit in at such an event.

"Why, yes, I'd like that," she trilled, her voice warm but her heart cold, stony. She had to prepare herself.

"Lovely, just lovely. 8 pm. I will come to…"

"No," Sarah interjected softly, "I will...come to you. Just give me the address, please." Wiland seemed to hesitate for a beat, but then he gave it to her. She wanted to be sure that she was not dependent on him for transportation, and she did not want to get trapped in a car with him. She needed to cultivate him, not display her cutlery to him - and that was all too likely if he pushed the limits. His hand on her arm had been all she could stand. Anything more intimate would result in blood-loss, his.

She ended the call. Wiland excitement was palpable over the phone. The strangeness of pretending to flirt, to be interested, and interested in that way, with Wiland, weighed heavy on Sarah, ponderous but imponderable. She was pretending what she had never done for real. She seemed to be doing it well enough, but she was drawing on books and movies and television, not on her own experience. For normal people, doing something for real almost preceded pretending to do it; that was the natural, logical order of things. But here, as with so much, normal did not apply to her. She thought about the kiss at the Farm.

Graham was right. She was never going to be normal, ordinary. She would be extra-ordinary. But not extraordinary. She smiled ruefully to herself at the distinction, one that had stuck in her head after watching _Lawrence of Arabia_ one night in a motel, waiting for her father. Lawrence had called himself 'extra-ordinary' meaning _outside of ordinary_ , not meaning _special_ or _gifted_ : it was his bitter recognition of his abnormality, his role as an outcast, it was not a celebration of anything that made him better than others. His abnormality made him less. She was _extra-ordinary_ too.

She gathered up her backpack and went to find a dress. It did not take long. She found a red cocktail dress with a square neckline and scoop back and a short,full-circle skirt. She looked terrific in it. In fact, she had stood in the dressing booth for several minutes looking at herself in it. She still was not used to the way she looked, not even weeks after the transformation. In her mind's eye, she still looked as she had when she arrived at the Farm. She knew she needed to get past that. She needed to know and expect the effect her looks would have on others, calculate it, own it. Wiland was obviously entranced.

She went back to her apartment to get ready. She found Donald there, seated in her desk chair. He had a file in his hands. He looked up and nodded in greeting. She put down her the long plastic bag from the dress shop and unshouldered her backpack.

"Huh. A new dress. I take it Wiland called."

"He did. A 'soiree'." Sarah spat the word with contempt. "Never been to one. Can't say it was high on my bucket list."

Donald laughed. Sarah was surprised but gratified by his laughter. He shook his head then handed her the file. "We still don't know much about Wiland, but the analysts and I now believe your hunch. He's involved. He may even be deeply involved. Maybe at the top - if you'll forgive the mixed spatial metaphors."

Sarah smiled and opened the file. Wiland's travels had been more thoroughly vetted. He had, it turned out, made some side trips to places where activity by the terrorist group had been identified or suspected. He had not been to each place where that had happened. And he had been places where nothing happened. But the overlap seemed to be too substantial for chance to explain it.

His finances raised no particular red flags, although there was a question about how he managed the lifestyle he did on the money that he officially made, even adding in money for speaking engagements, book sales and so on. He did not live so far above his means that it proved anything nefarious, but he was far enough above his means to raise eyebrows. He did not own expensive cars or houses. But he entertained: particularly, he entertained young women in extravagant style. It was possible that his entertaining of them, like tonight's soiree, was being funded by fans, patrons, but it was not obvious that was happening; there was no paper trail that proved it.

Donald cleared his throat and Sarah looked up. "I'm going to be back-up for you tonight. I'm not sending you in there with Wiland alone. Is he driving you?" Sarah shook her head and gave Donald the address.

"Good. Smart. Still, I am not easy about tonight. Maybe it's just that I feel I owe you, Sarah; or maybe I have a little of your intuition, but I worry about tonight. I want you to take this." Donald handed her a small device, circular and flat, with a button in the middle. There was a small, hinged lid that clicked down over the button. "It's basically a panic switch. All you have to do is flip back the lid and push the button. You can hide it in your purse. It looks almost like a euro. If anything goes wrong, if anything even starts to _feel_ wrong, you get out, and if you can't get out, you push the button, okay?"

"Yes, thanks, Donald. I...feel better having it."

"And I feel better with you having it. I think Graham's little infiltration mission may just have gotten ratcheted up; I think you may be about to meet some terrorist movers and shakers. We were hoping to take out a cell or two. Local rank and file. I now hope we might do more. But that means the stakes have gone up, way up. I hope you bought a dress you can conceal some weapons in." Donald gave her a concerned look.

"Don't worry. I will be armed. Plenty."

Donald stood up. "Ok, I will get the analysts started on the address, the owner. I will be near the house. I will have a team of two with me. Remember the button. Don't wait to push it. But remember, it will take us time to get in."

He stood up and headed toward the door. Then he saw the table, the now-unlit candles, and the remains of her chocolate croissant. He gave her a pained look but spared her any words. She made eye contact with him then turned and looked out the window as he left the apartment.

She took her dress from the bag and hung it next to the armoire. She sighed, then went to shower and do her makeup. Tonight, Rebecca, Agent Walker, began her serious work. The thought made her Sarah shaky all over.

 _Happy Birthday to me..._

* * *

 **A/N2** OOOookaay. Still out there? Still reading? Tune in next time for Chapter 6, "Down the Rabbit Hole (Three)", the end of the first mission. Please drop me a response as you leave. Thanks, everybody!


	6. Down the Rabbit Hole (Three)

**A/N1** Back with another installment of my story sequence.

Part of what I am trying to do is to imagine a series of events, decisions and actions that make Sarah's changeableness, dithering and delays in Burbank make better, deeper sense, so that we can see them not just as a result of her concern with agent/asset protocol (although she does have such a concern), or as the result of acquired habits of secrecy (although she does have such habits). I want to be able to see them as the result of (what I will call) _emotional plate tectonics_ , the slow, laborious movement and eventual resettling of huge parts of Sarah's inner life that Chuck occasions. But first I have to get the plates into their pre-Burbank positions.

(The trick is to write individual stories in the sequence that makes sense _vertically_ , i.e., on their own, and so sustain interest, while also making sense _horizontally_ , i.e., in relation to what is to come, to canon. Not sure I am pulling off the trick, but I'm giving it a try.)

There seem to be many of you out there reading, and that's great. I'd love to hear from you. Writing is a lonely business, and it seems lonelier when you are writing a story that you find sad, as I find this story. Drop me a review or PM; we can at least _commiserate_!

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER SIX

 _Down the Rabbit Hole (Part Three)_

* * *

"Time and the bell have buried the day,  
The black cloud carries the sun away.

\- T. S. Eliot _Burnt Norton_

* * *

Sarah was dressed, red-dressed, ready to soiree. _Can I make that a verb?_ She looked at herself one last time in the bathroom mirror. The beauticians at the Farm had taught her to use makeup and taught her that she normally needed little.

She had on lipstick that matched her dress, an all-day, permanent red. A little touch of colors on her cheeks, and above her eyes, and she was ready. Ready for...Wiland. She had never gone on a date. This was not a date, not really, but it was a pretended date. The thought of putting on a dress and make-up for someone she liked, wanted to spend time with, had been in her head as she had primped: she pretended that she wasn't going to be pretending. But she was - and given that it was Kurt Wiland she would be with, she was glad it was just pretending. Glad, but sad - sad that again she would pretend to do before she had really done.

Donald had texted her about his check on the address. A fancy house owned by a man named Jordi Nestroy. Initial attempts to check on Nestroy turned up suspiciously...nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly. Just no ties to anything worrisome. He was rich, very, very rich. But his finances were a vast and intricate tangle, a tangle many threads of which ran through Swiss Banks and other...difficult financial institutions. It was possible that Nestroy was the money behind the terrorist group...or that he was laundering money for them...or that he was just a rich man who'd read Wiland's _Left Behind?_ and become a fanboy.

Donald and two agents were in position at a distance from the house, the closest they could get without drawing suspicion, but not as close as Donald wanted. He reminded her of the panic button but also of the fact that it would take them a few minutes to get to her - a few minutes at best. Sarah texted back that she understood; she would take no unnecessary chances.

She looked at herself again in the mirror. She was now going to go and spend the evening making Wiland believe that the evening was going to end in a particular way. She needed to make him believe that even while she made sure he did not get the ending he would be fantasizing - no doubt, was already fantasizing about. Sarah sighed and glanced away from herself in the mirror. The beautician's at the Farm had made her attractive, or, better, made her latent attractiveness patent, but at a cost. She now drew attention, drew notice, unless she made a careful effort not to do so. Now, she was beautiful enough to expect to be the object of lust. That had not been true before. Had someone liked her before, she would have been virtually certain that he liked _her_ \- after all, her hair and braces would have been a thicket and fence between him and lust...for Sarah... _Jenny_. But now it would be true that he might want her without wanting _her_ , to be satisfied simply to have her body and to let her, the person - her mind, her spirit, her hopes and dreams, needs and fears - languish disregarded.

Certainly, Wiland had no interest in her mind and had shown none when they met, despite his questions about his lecture. They had been asked so that he could gauge what she thought of him, not what she thought of the lecture, of its content.

Being the object of lust was challenge enough, but she recognized that being a spy, being involved in seduction missions (even given that 'seduction' did not mean quite _seduction_ ) meant encouraging that lust, fanning its flame. And a mark or an asset that might actually be interested in _her,_ meaning _not just in her body_ , would be interested only in a cover version of her, not the real her. The real her, if there was an actual person answering to that description at all, was likely never to be seen, never to be known. Her body or her lies, that would be the object - never the real her.

She let go of that line of thought, forced it from her mind It did no good to feel bad about it all. It only made the situation, the work, harder. She needed to stop feeling anything about the job - and to just do it. She made that her goal. They called her the Ice Queen at the Farm; it was time to embrace the title, not just in the face of unwanted advances from male agents, but in the face of advances from her unwanted life more generally. Her Ice Age began tonight. She looked at the clock; it was time.

ooOoo

Sarah took a gray sweater from her closet, a dressy one she had brought with her, and put it on against the chill of the damp spring evening. She had a flat ceramic blade hidden beneath her dress. She put her S&W in her handbag (a risk, but one she would run against other risks). She fastened the straps of her heels, put on the sweater, and headed out. She had seen the taxi waiting from her window.

ooOoo

Nestroy's house was huge and amazing. The taxi ferried her around the large, half-circle driveway and let her out. She had no more than stood up and adjusted her sweater when Wiland came sweeping out of the front door toward her. He was wearing a cream-colored suit jacket on top of a dark turtleneck. Jeans. Black boots. His cologne made contact with her before her hand found the small of her back. He leaned in to kiss her cheek and she leaned in to facilitate it, tamping down her visceral repugnance at the contact of his lips on her skin. She made herself smile and giggle, stretching her eyes wide, first at him, then at the house. "Wow!" was all she said, leaving it to him to interpret the word.

He kept his hand against her back. She was doubly glad of the sweater, since she was doubly chilled: the weather and Wiland. She let him guide her via gentle pressure on her back into the house, where a man of about sixty, balding but still commanding, stood in the door, beside a handsome woman of about the same age. The man watched her legs head toward the house, and never looked toward her face until she was at arm's length. His look was not kind.

Wiland, beside her, in a tone of assumed humility, introduced her. "Rebecca - our host, Jordi Nestroy, and his wife, Sophia." His tone was one thing; his posture testified to his pride at having her there with him. He was standing taller, visibly erect. Sarah tried to push that thought out of her mind immediately.

Sarah put out her hand, keeping it limp and meek, and shook both Jordi and Sophia's hands.

"Kurt had been eager for us to...meet you," Jordi noted, his voice higher than Sarah expected, but richly inflected, cultivated. His English was almost devoid of a German accent, although it was present at the edges of his words.

"I'm so happy to be here!" Sarah exclaimed, rushing on to add, "this is the nicest house I think I've ever seen!" Jordi and Sophia smiled and turned to lead her and Kurt into the house, out of the small anteroom they were standing in.

Her heels were audible on the marble floor of the large room. There were various people standing around, most in the age group of Wiland or of the Nestroys. Couples. Drinks in hand. Subdued chatting. And then Sarah noticed a couple she had not expected. Sebastian and Christiana were there. She was seated on a love seat beside Sebastian, who was talking animatedly to her. She was nodding in response, but her eyes were on Wiland and Sarah. Christiana seemed to have bought a new dress too, black and clingy and very short over her long, shapely legs and heels. Sebastian gaze trailed Christiana's to Wiland and to Sarah, and Sarah saw a cloud pass over his face before he smiled, a smile too stretched to be wholly genuine.

Wiland had not mentioned that Sebastian and Christiana were invited; Sarah was, frankly, surprised to see them. She had become surer of her read of the situation since the lecture, and she assumed that neither Wiland nor Christiana would be eager to have her there as he attempted to seduce ( _that word, again_ ) Sarah. _Rebecca._ Distance. Distance. Ice. Ice and distance. Sebastian must have wondered about what had happened after the lecture. The plans Christiana claimed they had but that they did not have. Perhaps he'd been doing some arithmetic in the meantime, putting two and two together to get...a different twosome.

Christiana stood simultaneously with Sebastian. Wiland led Sarah to them. "You see, Rebecca, I made sure that your friends would be here too." A false note lingered in that line of Wiland's and it echoed in Sebastian's eyes.

Christiana reached out for Sarah's hands. Sarah let her take them. "Kurt, let me take Rebecca and give her a tour. Show her with the powder room is. I'll bring her right back." Sebastian did not seem overjoyed with that suggestion but he nodded, a defeated dip of his chin. Wiland smiled at Christiana, a conspiratorial smile.

Christiana whirled, a little too eagerly, and led Sarah from the large room by a hand, through a doorway, and down a long hallway. At the end of it, she opened a door, and still with Sarah's hand in hers, led her into a gleaming golden bathroom, the size of Sarah's entire apartment. There were a set of four plush red chairs against a wall, and Christiana headed for one. She let go of Sarah's hand and sat down, motioning for Sarah to do the same.

"I'm...I'm glad you came. Kurt was very eager that you should. In fact, this event was really thrown together so that he could bring you here, show you off." Christiana looked over to the doorway, making sure it was closed. It was. "There are several...important people here tonight, people who could make your time in Leipzig...memorable, exciting. Maybe even...significant. But tonight is the crucial time…" She stared into Sarah's eyes, as if waiting for something from her…

Sarah's mind was working. What was Christiana driving at? Sarah decided to wait her out. Better to seem slow than to give an answer that would derail her chance at finding out more about Wiland and Nestroy and the other...important people...at the soiree. _Shindig. I'm going to call it a shindig._ She stared back into Christiana's eyes, summing all the innocence that she actually had.

Christiana frowned and blew out a breath, looking to the ceiling as if for help from above. "Americans. So stupid about such things…" She looked back at Sarah. "Wiland has gone to a lot of trouble because he intends...no, he expects...to bed you tonight, Rebecca. You can't really not know that, not given the way you look, that dress." A twinge of envy colored Christiana's cheeks. "You must know what he...wants."

So, Wiland was going to have Christiana do this work for him. She was hoping to extract a _yes_ from her now to a question Wiland did not want to ask later. If she said _no,_ it was clear she would be shown the door, and lose her tie not only to Wiland, but likely to Christiana and Sebastian. She couldn't do that. The mission. Her father.

She allowed a knowing look to creep into her eyes, and just the hint of a leer onto her lips. "Oh, is that all? Of course. I have...expectations too."

Christiana blew out another breath, this time of relief, not frustration. "Good. Between us girls, your expectations will be...satisfied. But you should know, Wiland has very specific...tastes."

Sarah decided to try to ramp up the conversation, to try to figure out more about what was going on. "So, I take it you know this from experience."

Christiana blanked her expression for a couple of seconds, then made a decision. "Yes, experience. But, Rebecca, Sebastian does not know. He suspects, unfortunately, but he does not know. I have been sleeping with Wiland for several months. He pays for my apartment, my clothes, everything...a generous allowance. He will do the same for you. I...assume he will want to _keep_ us both...if you are okay with that."

Sarah could read Christiana now. She was an open book. The cover was open; the pages before her. Christiana was not sure that Wiland would want to keep them both. Whatever her feelings about Sarah and Wiland were, they were complicated by economic considerations. She was, in effect, Wiland's mistress, his kept woman, and she obviously wanted to continue in that role. Wiland must have made her promises that she would if she would help him add Rebecca to his...harem. But Christiana was unsure about those promises - and it was because she was worried that Wiland would decide he was only interested in the new, not the old.

Sarah knew her stomach was knotted. She refused to pay any attention to it. Ice and distance. She shrugged at Christiana. "Hey, if he's willing to pay for all that for me, while you and I...um...split duties...that seems good. Maybe I can find me a Sebastian to keep me warm on the nights you are keeping Kurt warm."

Sarah was appalled at her own words, the tone and assurance and compliance in them. She intended to do no such thing, of course. But how could she so much as say these words this way, play along with this. _Who am I?_

Christiana's relief was turning into excitement. "Really? You are...willing? Tonight?"

Sarah's breathing was labored but she was able to keep it from registering in her voice. "Yes, sure. Sounds like fun. I was planning to do it for free. Like you said: _this dress_. Easy money. Or, I guess…" she leaned toward Christiana and lowered her voice to a whisper, "...money for being easy." She leaned back then and narrowed her eyes. "Specific...tastes...you say. Just how... _specific_?"

"Oh, nothing that will...hurt...you. But he will expect you to be...compliant with his wishes."

"How did you end up...with him, Christiana?" Sarah wanted to parlay Christiana's eagerness into information.

"He spotted me at a lecture. Talked to me. Took me to dinner. Then we went back to my place. That was months ago, one of his early trips to Leipzig."

"But you said that if things worked out tonight, Wiland might make my time in Leipzig _significant_. I assume you meant significant when I am not on my back or my knees, right?" _Who is saying these things? It's supposed to be my birthday._

"Yes, I did. Politically significant. He can make you part of the battle against the rampant capitalism in your country and Europe. Kurt is a more important man than most realize. Soon, he will be even more important, although his importance will still not be realized. But as he says, what matters is that changes are forced to happen, not who gets the credit. If he knows he did it, that is enough." Zealotry and desire fought for control of Christiana's features.

Sarah knew she was close now. _So close._ Christiana was so focused on what she was trying to ensure between Wiland and Sarah that she had begun to lose track of what she was revealing about him.

"Oh, he seems...powerful to me, I admit," Sarah said, making sure she looked thrilled but not caught up in the actual details. "I guess he must have lots of people who work for him?"

"Well, quite a few. The most important ones are here tonight. Especially Nestroy. He's the money, Kurt is the brains. But they've been a bit on the outs lately. Nestroy seems to think Kurt is all talk and no action, but Kurt will show him...and soon…"

Christiana seemed to come to herself all at once. "Well, enough girl talk. Enjoy yourself tonight. It will be...memorable." Christiana got up. "Are you coming?"

"Just a minute. Since I am here, I might as well…"

"Oh, ok, right. I will go back and keep the men entertained. It would help me if you could perhaps find a moment and talk to Sebastian, find a way to reassure him. About me." She sighed, her voice heavy and conflicted suddenly. "I have feelings for him but he is a poor musician…"

"Sure, and you can let Wiland know that his evening will end with...a bang." Sarah smiled even as her throat burned from an upsurge of bile. She ignored the burn. Ice. Ice. Ice and distance.

Christiana left. Sarah grabbed her phone and texted Donald.

 **Confirmed by C. Wiland is the leader of the terrorists. Nestroy is the money man.**

She waited nervously. **Good work. Get out of there as soon as you can.**

Quickly, she responded. **Easier said than done. I've had to agree to become Wiland's concubine. Duties start tonight.**

She thought that would be the end of the texts, but her phone lit up again almost immediately: ' **Concubine'? Ha! Get out of there, Agent.**

Checking the door, Sarah deleted the texts from Donald. She had deleted earlier ones during the ride in the taxi. She checked: the flat ceramic blade was still taped to her side. The S&W was weighty in her handbag. Her girl-to-girl chat with Christiana should make an exit strategy easier. She believed Sarah. She would convey that belief to Wiland. Maybe Sarah could get sick, conveniently. But she needed to let some time pass between Christiana informing Wiland of her agreement and the beginning of her exit strategy.

She walked down the hallway and back into the main room. The same subdued conversations still seemed to be going on, except Christiana was talking to Wiland, standing close to him. Sebastian was watching them, frowning, his thumb in his pants pocket and his fingers patting his pants leg. Wiland glanced up when she entered the room. She could see his evening plans for her plane across his face. She did not think she would have to fake being sick. A rogue wave of nausea slammed into her. She fought it back. It would help in one way, but hurt in another. She needed to manage this correctly, make another clean exit like at the lecture hall. Vomiting on the floor would not be a clean exit.

Sarah stood still, behind a large chair, waiting for the sick feeling to pass. It began to subside, and she allowed herself to look more closely at the others. She could see patterns of deference, something her father had taught her. The others in the room, men and women, were all oriented on Wiland, although not staring at him or even looking at him most of the time. But, as Jack Burton said, _the other dogs always know where the mean dogs are, darlin'. Always. They'll show you the mean dog if you watch closely._ While Christiana had given Sarah confirmation about Wiland and Nestroy, the behavior of the people in the room would have certainly led her to suspect what Christiana had told her of Wiland. These people, in this room, all seemed to regard him as important. All except Nestroy, who, while he kept track of Wiland, did not do so deferentially. There was something else in his tracking looks, and Wiland seemed to know it. The two seemed to be circling each other in the room even without moving. Wiland broke off his conversation with Christiana, shot a quick glance at Nestroy, then walked to Sarah. "Are you okay, Rebecca, dear?" He put his hand on her hand, the one resting on the back of the chair.

She nodded. "Yes, sorry. Just felt a twinge of something. I haven't felt quite right all day." Sarah realized that all she had eaten all day was part of a chocolate croissant. Bad form. On the Farm, they had preached to the recruits how important eating and rest were for spies, how important it was to do both so as to stay sharp. She had been too depressed and distracted to remember to eat. And then she had that awful conversation with Christiana, had promised ( _pretended to promise_ ) to become Wiland's paid plaything…

Wiland looked concerned, although Sarah knew it was more a concern about the rest of his evening than about her condition. That only mattered to the extent that it might keep her from doing as he expected.

Just as Wiland started to respond, Nestroy cleared his throat and stepped into the center of the room. "Ladies and gentlemen, I have planned something special for this evening. Something I have long wanted to do. Please just stand where you are."

A man came through the front door with a pistol in his hand. He stopped when he got to the edge of the large room everyone was in. A door on the other side of the room opened and two men with pistols came in through it. Conversation died immediately. _What the hell?_ Sarah had the panic button but it was in her purse. With the S&W. Stupid, rookie mistake. _Shit._ Maybe she could get to it, but she would have to wait and see what was happening.

Nestroy turned to face Wiland, but was standing still at a distance from him. "You are not fit to be our leader. This…" Nestroy waved at the party and the guests, "...is proof. You would use me and my resources to bed a pretty American, when you are already bedding this pretty German," he nodded at Christiana. Sarah heard Sebastian's heart-wrenching gasp. "You are not man enough for her," now Nestroy nodded at Sebastian, "and you will certainly not be enough for two young women. And you should not be thinking of young women at all. We have a mission," Nestroy's voice began to get louder, his controlled earlier tone becoming shrill, "and we should be planning it, not socializing. I have had enough." He turned to one of the two men who had come into the room together. "Take him. And take the two _girls_ and the _boy_. We have serious matters to discuss. A car is waiting in the rear." Sarah looked across at Christiana and Sebastian. _Sebastian's eyes…_

Suddenly, a gun was in Sebastian's hand. He took aim quickly and fired at Wiland. Sarah ducked behind the chair. She heard Wiland groan. Then she saw him. He had turned to face Sebastian and was pulling a gun from beneath his jacket. Sarah saw a wound on his shoulder; Sebastian had hit him.

Without thinking, Sarah plunged her hand down the neckline of her own dress, freeing the ceramic blade. She lunged toward Wiland. He had his gun up, ready to fire. She drove the knife deep into his thigh. He got off a shot, and then another. And then a hell of bullets and screams and breaking, shattering glass and splintering wood erupted all around her. Voices. Grunts. Screams. She dug her S & W out of her purse. Bullets struck the chair. Ricocheted off the floor. She felt spits of marble from it.

Wiland slumped to the floor, his cream jacket covered in carnation designs. Sarah's knife was still sticking from his leg. A trembling sigh; he looked at her but did not see her. Then he did not move.

Shouting. More cries. The shooting finally stopped. Sarah recognized a voice that told everyone to stand still. She scrambled up, gun in hand but pointed at nothing, just hanging there. Donald was in the middle of the room, flanked by two men. The pistol of each was smoking. Sarah glanced again at Wiland. His eyes were fixed on nothing; he was dead. Nestroy and Sophia were huddled in the floor. Sophia was sobbing. Nestroy's shoulder was bleeding but he was conscious. The other guests were on the floor, some beginning to get up. None seemed wounded. But then Sarah saw Christiana. She was on her hands and knees, her fists in Sebastian's shirt, shaking him, telling him to get up. He was not going to get up. Like Wiland, he was dead. Blood was pooling beneath his body and Christiana's knees were in it, although she did not realize it.

Donald stepped toward Sarah. "Are you okay?" He glanced at her as he did, checking for wounds. "We saw a van come up. I worked my way to the house, saw them get out. One to the front, two to the rear. I had a bad feeling…"

Sarah heard his words without exactly comprehending them. The scene was settling on her. Sebastian. Christiana's imploring tone had shifted. She was no longer quite speaking, just making raw, miserable sounds. Sobs. That's what they were. Sobs.

Donald was still speaking. "One of my men will take you back to your apartment. We called the police. I know the chief. I'll take care of this. You need to get out of here."

The solicitude in his voice finally caused Sarah both to hear him and understand. He was going to let her get out of there. She jammed her gun back in her handbag. One of the men put his gun away and reached out to her, taking her gently by the elbow.

But then Christiana was in Sarah's face, blood on her knees, her body clenched in rage. "You, Rebecca, you did this. Somehow." Christiana looked at Donald, the two men, the still-smoky chaos of the room. "Because of you, Sebastian is dead."

Sarah knew that was not true, but it felt true to her. She glanced past Christiana to Sebastian's body. Sarah had liked him. Sarah had liked Christiana. She had liked them together. Now, he was no more and so they were no more. She glanced back to Christiana, whose rage had melted into weeping. A part of Sarah wanted to reach out and hold Christiana. But what part? _Rebecca, Sarah, Jenny...so many parts, who knew which was which, which wanted what?_ She was not one person: she was a phalanx of partial people, a phalanx that extended back into her childhood, but that did not all together add up to one whole person.

She could smell blood and gunpowder in the air. A smell she would get used to - she was certain of that. Sarah left Christiana alone in her grief, left with the other agent.

Distance. She needed distance. Distance and ice. _Welcome to the Ice Age; the Queen has been enthroned._

She walked out the door, determined not to look back. What good would that do? What good would feelings do? This mission was, evidently, done. Move on. Next mission. Move on.

ooOoo

Two hours later, as the Leipzig church bells tolled midnight, Donald picked her up at her apartment to take her to the airport.

A flight out had been arranged - military, not commercial. Graham had called her to check on her and to let her know how happy with her mission he had been. It had gone badly sideways, yes, but none of that was her fault. She had done her job. Events took their own course.

Nestroy had talked, giving up the other members of Wiland's terrorist group. They had been plotting to bomb the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, the train station, and to do so in a few days, but they had been waiting for a final go-ahead from Wiland. That plot was foiled. The German government was pleased. They had covered up the true nature of the incident at Nestroy's.

No one told her what happened to Christiana. Sarah never asked.

Graham gave her an address in DC. An apartment he had secured for her there. He told her he would call after she got there with the next mission. She was not even curious to see the place. Another pretend home.

Donald had her suitcase. She had her backpack. She looked around the room, her gaze settling on the violin case. Donald looked at it and back to her. "Take it. It's a reminder of who you really are. You need that if you are going to make it in this business, Sarah." His smile was kind, encouraging. She stared at the case.

 _I don't know who I am. I'm better off not knowing._

She thought about the time she had spent playing in the apartment, the time she had played for Sebastian and Christiana. Sebastian would never play music again. Neither would Rebecca...or Sarah...or Jenny...Misery swooped in and enveloped Sarah in its dark wings, squeezing her until it hurt.

Why dump any sweetener into her bitter life?

Better to just drink it down straight.

Better to stay iced over, and not invite any thaw. Better to always be at a distance from yourself, and never at home.

She shook her head at Donald, voiding her face of all expression. His eyes grew shadowed in response. "Alright," he sighed quietly, pursing his lips for a moment, "your call, Agent Walker."

Ice and distance.

She left the violin behind.

* * *

 **A/N2** _Intrant_ Agent Walker.

I'd love to tell you things are about to get better - but they aren't. Tune in next time for Chapter 7, "Red Rabbits". We jump ahead in time to the story of Sarah's Red Test.


	7. Red Rabbits

**A/N1** I have wanted these prequel stories to be canon-compliant, but this one pushes on the limits. More on that in A/N2, below. Sarah's Red Test, but with more focus on context and less on the event itself, since Sarah herself gives a brief narration in canon and I do not wish to crowd that narration. A long chapter for me.

I appreciate the thoughtful reviews. Not an easy story to write or read, I know, but I wanted to see if I could manage to work inside the often tight, canon-created, canon-dictated spaces of the story. And, hey, drop me a line; let me know how I am doing.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER SEVEN

 _Red Rabbits_

* * *

Out of a gunny sack fall red rabbits  
Into the crucible to be rendered an emulsion  
And we can't allow a chance they'd restore themselves  
So we can't make it easy on you  
\- The Shins, _Red Rabbits_

* * *

As she trudged its drearily fluorescent intestine hallways, Sarah cursed Charles de Gaulle Airport. The place was the First Circle of Hell. And, unfortunately, it kept appearing in her travel plans. Not normally because she was flying _into_ Paris, but because she was making a connection there to go on elsewhere.

But making the connection meant circling around the never-ending guts of the place, and effectively re-entering the airport, re-visiting security. And normally the connection never allowed time to do all that, so that you had to worry the entire time about missing your flight, then sprint to your gate.

Luckily, she was not going to have to run her suitcase through that gauntlet today. Paris was her destination. She had gotten her passport stamped at Customs, one stamp now among many, so many it was hard for the Customs agent to find a place to put the stamp. Since her first trip overseas, to Leipzig, her first mission, Sarah had seen much of the world. Well, that was misleading: _seen_ sounded like a success-term, like she had done touristy things, visited, say, the Eiffel Tower or traipsed around a pyramid. She hadn't. _Well, she had once run through the sand near a pyramid trying to escape an enemy agent from whom she had stolen information, but the pyramid had been cover, a place to hide, not a wonder to behold._ Mostly, Sarah had seen other countries as she saw Charles de Gaulle Airport - she passed through for work, barely noticing anything that was not work-related.

 _Leipzig_. A lot had changed for Sarah in the aftermath of that gone-sideways mission. On the military transport back to the US, she had reckoned with herself. Taken stock. If she was going to survive the CIA, if her job was not going to kill her or break her beyond fixing, she was going to have to make herself invulnerable, or as close as she could get, both physically and emotionally.

So she began a purposefully brutal training regimen. She pushed herself physically every chance she got, working to further enhance her hand-to-hand combat skills and her weapons skills. The brutality of the regime had the benefit of helping her sleep. She was too exhausted not too, despite the vortex in her head and the toothache in her chest.

She broke off the few personal ties she had, not pursuing any offer of friendship - not just on the job, but everywhere. She never contacted Donald again after Leipzig. She squashed any thought of ever contacting Gale or James. She worked actively to forget that they were part of her life. She even worked actively to forget that her father was part of her life, or about the grifters' life they had shared. No longer consciously thinking of her work as keeping her father protected, she began to concentrate on her work for its own sake, for the challenge of it. She began to pretend that she had no past and no future. She was a woman without personal qualities. Her only qualities were professional.

 _Professional_. She had locked onto that ideal at the Farm, but she had not been as resolute about it as she should have been. _James. Mistake. She should never have had a friend at the Farm._ After Leipzig, that changed.

She became all professional, no remainder. In the little downtime she had in the intervening three years, she studied anything that she could find about her job and how to do it. Graham was happy to supply her old mission files of particularly successful and particularly unsuccessful missions, and she pored over them, attempting to find insights, useable pros, and cons, ways of duplicating the successes but avoiding the failures. She examined her own past missions as if someone else's, not just the paperwork, but forcing herself through elaborate re-livings of them under their professional aspect. She identified her weaknesses; she capitalized on her strengths. She became better and better; she became worse and worse.

She and Graham had come to an unspoken, perhaps a bit uneasy agreement, that seduction missions were not in her wheelhouse. They weren't off the table. She had had a few, but mostly Graham had turned her into a glorified CIA thief. The skills her father had taught her, that she had used to sneak a look at Robert's diary back in San Diego, had been made more perfect and added to at the Farm. She could pick almost any lock, circumvent almost any security. She mastered all the devices, the old school, 'analog' ones, like hairpins, and the new school digital ones, like electronic code-breakers. She was a ghost, even among ghosts: in and out in the twinkling of an eye with no one the wiser. A wildcard, she could turn up anywhere and then be gone.

Her life was no longer punctuated by the clock, or by the rotation of days and nights, or the cycle of the seasons. It was punctuated wholly by missions. Even her downtime was mission-oriented. Graham helped with that since he gave her almost no downtime. She worked.

Mission. Mission. Mission. Be professional. Do the job. No mistakes. Mission. Move on.

She became a minor legend. She worked alone; she got the job done. After Donald, she had not had another handler. Graham gave her all the leeway she wanted since she was producing results. She rarely ever got back to DC, to the apartment the CIA, Graham, supplied her. When she did, she was there in the same way she was in hotel rooms in foreign countries. She never unpacked. She studied, worked out, and watched her phone, listened for a knock. She feared to be alone with herself.

Since she was almost always out-of-country, she now typically got her missions _in situ_ via packet from other agents. Graham talked to her on the phone often enough, checking on how she was doing, how the mission was going, but she rarely saw him in the flesh. Her life had become almost monastic, single-mindedly devoted to the Agency.

She did not try to justify her practical faith by an appeal to abstractions like the Greater Good. If Graham talked like that, she let him. She left the significance of what she was doing to others to assess. She just did what she was expected to do and did it superlatively well. She did not want to think about significance. That would weaken her.

The missions that she had studied that went wrong almost always did because the agents involved had allowed themselves to become distracted, to feel something for a mark or asset, or to worry that what they were doing was somehow wrong. She did not allow distractions. She had learned - after Sebastian, but especially after Christiana, to disregard the fate of her marks and assets, to treat them as accessories to her missions, like her knives or her S&W.

She did not imagine their inner lives, ask about their motives or reasons, their hopes or fears, and she shared absolutely nothing true of herself with them. Not only because it could rebound on her disastrously, but also because sharing it would mean thinking about herself, wondering about her own motives or reasons, her hopes or fears, her inner life. She had become practiced at pretending that she had no inner life, that she was empty. _Not hard to pretend that._

Like her marks or assets, like her knives and gun, she too was really only an accessory to the mission. The mission mattered. Nothing else. _Who am I? Special Agent Sarah Walker._ And the 'Special Agent' was not a role, not a removable predicate that modified who she was, as 'blonde' did. No, she was a Special Agent. That was who she was essentially. Nothing more.

It was working for her. She was not unhappy. She was just not happy. That was okay. _In The Space Between Unhappy and Not Happy: The Sarah Walker Story._

Graham had still not told her about his special plan for her. She was unsure if it had started or was still to start, but he seemed pleased and she kept her head down. There was no margin in wondering about his motives or reasons either.

ooOoo

But this trip to Paris felt different. After her last mission, Graham had talked to her by phone for a surprisingly long time, and he seemed to be feeling her out, trying to determine something, and she was sure by the time she hung up that he had.

She was to meet her contact, a CIA agent, she did not know who, at a small, out-of-the-way hotel in Paris. All Graham had told her was that she would be returning to DC when the mission ended and that they would have things to talk about when she did. He seemed to expect the mission to be quick.

She finally emerged from the bowels of Charles de Gaulle and went outside to join the line waiting for a taxi. She would know more about what was going on soon. She thought of her own term, 'monastic', and she smirked to herself. Nuns wore a ring, the sign of their marriage to Christ. She wore no ring, but she was married to the Agency. _Happily married? No. Just married. Committed, regardless of the circumstances of the commitment. "Till death us do part…"_

ooOoo

The taxi wound through the Paris streets. As was her habit, she watched the streets go by, careful to catch their names, filling in more of her mental map of the city. She had been here twice before on missions, so she had a good grasp of the place, but it never hurt to keep track. Streets changed names, traffic got rerouted, construction crews were out. She noted everything she saw but enjoyed nothing. Paris was the physical location of the next mission, not a place to be seen.

After paying the taxi driver and collecting her bag, Sarah went to the desk. She gave them her cover name, Katie O'Connell, and they had her reservation. The desk clerk told her that her friend had already picked up a key. Sarah asked no questions; she just nodded her acknowledgment, careful to show no surprise, to give no reaction. She had not expected the other agent to be there first.

She took her key and got on the elevator. She arrived at the room and stopped. She listened at the door and heard nothing. As silently as she could, she opened the door. Stepping inside, she could hear the sound of the shower. She made her way slowly into the room. There were two double beds. A suitcase, black and unremarkable, like Sarah's own, was on one of the beds, the one closest to the bathroom. It was unzipped but closed.

The sound of the shower ended, so Sarah fought down the urge to look in the suitcase. Instead, she put hers on the other bed and sat down in the chair near it, turning it so that its back was to the wall and so that it faced the bathroom door. She sat down, but only after carefully noting the arrangement of the furniture in the room and gauging the distance from her chair to the bathroom door.

A few minutes later, the door opened and steam rolled out of it. And then, wrapped in a towel in the midst of the steam, she saw Hannah Traylor. Hannah looked at Sarah in studied unconcern, smirking unpleasantly at her, enjoying Sarah's reaction.

"Well, well, Sarah Walker. How the _hell_ are you? I've been hearing good things." Hannah opened her suitcase while Sarah sat in stunned silence. Hannah grabbed some clothes. "Back in a minute." She stepped back into the steam, back into the bathroom, and closed the door.

 _Hannah Traylor._

Sarah had not seen her nemesis since she left the Farm to go to Leipzig. She'd heard that Hannah had been sent into the field. Rumors were that she had turned into a successful agent in her own right. Sarah had never cared enough to follow any of the rumors, to ask to know anything more. She had hoped never to see Hannah again. The thought of running into her accidentally had made Sarah feel dread on the few times she had been in Langley. Luckily, she had not run into her there. But now she was here, attached to Sarah's mission. Her roommate again.

 _Hannah Traylor. Shit._

ooOoo

Hannah eventually came back into the room, dressed to kill. She had on a clingy black top and a very short miniskirt, and long black boots. She twirled when she got to the end of the bed. "What do you think, Walker?"

Sarah shrugged but then added, figuring that there was no reason to strain the already brittle atmosphere: "NIce, I guess, depending on where you are going…"

Hannah smirked but less unpleasantly this time. "Out. Out on the town. My mission is to give you this, and then I am done. But Graham's putting me up here for a couple of extra days. So, I am going to make the most of it." She walked to her suitcase and opened it up. She took out a beret, black, and put it on her head. Sarah thought of Christiana then banished the thought immediately from her mind.

She smirked at Hannah. "You know, the only people who wear those in Paris are old men and Americans." Hannah gave Sarah a close look. She frowned, shrugged and then put the beret back in her suitcase. She fished out a large manila envelope, sealed, and walked toward Sarah with it clutched to her chest.

"I don't know what's in here, Walker. But I do know the mission won't take long. And that there's nothing for you to do about it tonight. Look, I need a man, frankly; my last mission gave me no time for a man, and I need one...regularly." She paused then raised her eyebrows. "So, why don't we leave our issues back on the Farm and go out together, _cuz_?" Hannah drawled her way through the invitation, like some hayseed, and actually smiled as it finished. No smirk. No discernible trick up her sleeve.

A night out in Paris. Sarah had not had many nights out anywhere since she started, not unless the nights were themselves part of the cover, actually work nights. Three years and she had really never taken a vacation, never been between missions for more than a couple of days. But _Hannah_? And the mission. Maybe she could not take any actual steps toward completing it tonight, but surely she could spend the night doing mission prep?

"Um, thanks, Hannah, but, no, I should go ahead and start prepping for the mission." Sarah glanced into Hannah's eyes and then down to the manilla envelope.

Hannah stared at her for a long moment. She held out the envelope, but just as Sarah took it, she grasped it more tightly, holding onto one end while Sarah held onto the other. "Still the Ice Queen, I see. I'm guessing nothing's ever made its way into the _icebox_? Still a virgin, are we, miss Top-of-the-Class?" Hannah shook her head dismissively. For a moment, as Sarah looked at her, she was Heather Chandler; Heather Chandler was Hannah. Jenny had been dismissed like that in the high school hallway often enough, for the same reason.

Hannah let go of the envelope and whirled away. She opened her suitcase again and took a purse out of it. She slung it over her shoulder as she headed to the door.

"Don't wait up."

Sarah sat still with the envelope in her hands. Hannah showing up had loosened the bonds on herself that Sarah had been forging so carefully for three years. Suddenly, the vulnerabilities of the Farm, of her seventeen-year-old self, were back with a vengeance. That was the last thing she needed. She had worked to rid herself of those vulnerabilities - or at least to find a way to stop paying attention to them. If they still allowed her to be hurt, she had become practiced at ignoring the hurt. _And a successfully ignored hurt is no real hurt at all, right?_

She was Special Agent Sarah Walker, not Jenny Burton. Why was it that Hannah could hurt her? How could the memory of Heather Chandler still sting? She carried knives and a gun. She had traveled the world. She had stolen files and microchips, ran seductions on foreign gangsters. She had stabbed more than one person. Wounded one in an out-of-control firefight in a dark street in Barcelona. Why would she suddenly revert to the girl she had been? Why was all that hurt still there? _Because ignoring what you feel does not make it unreal._ She drove that recognition from her mind. She shifted topics.

The truth was that she was no longer a virgin, and had not been one for a while. Over the past three years, she had been with men, few, but still...

She would never have told Hannah that, or let on in any way. Part of the reason was that Hannah was, well, Hannah, and she would have demanded details, and Sarah was fiercely private in general, but even more fiercely private about _that._ She could find ways to say what needed to be said when she spoke as a cover, as part of a seduction gambit, but anytime she had to say anything of that sort as herself, she found that she was either unable or unwilling.

Men. Her need and, frankly, her curiosity had eventually gotten the better of her. She would have nothing to do with marks or assets - that was a firm rule, a line she would not cross: that was the way unsuccessful missions occurred - but she had found herself with time occasionally during missions, when nothing was happening or was likely to happen, and finally, one night, during such a time, she met a man she liked in her hotel bar and she let him take her to his room.

They had sex. It was frightening and painful, then it was frightening and pleasurable. But the next day, all she felt was regret. She had left the man's room as soon as they had finished. In fact, she had not even undressed. She was not going to do that, just as she was not going to spend the night there. She pulled her clothes back into place and left the room without a word or a backward glance.

It had been...quicker and far less...life-changing than she had expected. As she recalled it the next day, she realized that neither of them had been interested in anything except the bodily transaction. He had told her his name but she had forgotten it. She had not told him her name, not even her cover name.

In this case, perhaps, she had not pretended to do before she actually did, but it still felt like it. What she had been curious about and what she needed she had neither found out nor been given. She had acquired firsthand knowledge of the physics and the physiology of the act, and had gotten something bodily from the transaction, the release and the pleasure that accompanied it - but that was all.

The other couple of men she had been with had been variations on the same theme. Less fright, but no more of what she seemed really to want. She had managed with the most recent (now months ago) to take more of her clothes off. But she had been gone as soon as it was over and she could get her removed clothes back on. Maybe normal people could have sex - _make love_ \- romantically, freely expressing intimacy and desire for intimacy, where what happened in bed was a culmination of their feelings for each other and simultaneously a renewal of their feelings for each other. Maybe normal people could have that. Sarah could not. Her life had no place for it. She could not afford to have such feelings to culminate and renew. Whatever she had once hoped for - whatever still crept into her mind and heart during the few moments her control slipped - she had finally yielded, accepted the defeat of her hopes. Childish dreams. Too much tv. Too many movies. The wrong books. She was a woman without personal qualities. She had no personal life. She was all professional, all controlled.

She grimaced to herself. No, she would not be sharing any of that with anyone, but particularly not Hannah. It would likely sound worse than admitting to being a virgin. "The Ice Queen fumbles with ecstasy…" Sarah could hear Hannah saying it.

Sarah sighed. She so could have done without Hannah. She had been so done with Hannah. Why had Graham chosen to send _her_? Sarah had never complained about Hannah to Graham; Sarah had never mentioned Hannah to Graham. Probably, it was just a bureaucratic coincidence.

Sarah turned the envelope over in her hands and tore open the seal. Inside was a file. Putting the empty envelope between herself and the arm of the chair, Sarah sat back and opened the file. On top of a thin stack of papers were photographs. A woman. Young, perhaps a few years older than Sarah. The woman was attractive, stylishly dressed. She had wavy dark hair and large eyes. A nice smile. One picture looked like a picture taken for a CIA photo ID. The others were surveillance photos, but only of the woman. The photos looked like they had been taken over a length of time and at different places. Signs and other things marked some photos as having been taken in the US, others as having been taken in foreign cities.

After studying the photos, Sarah looked at her orders. She saw Graham's signature at the bottom of the page before she began to read it. As she read, her hands started to shake, and her breathing became ragged.

She finished reading the page. She squeezed her eyes shut. She had to have misunderstood. _That_ could not be the order, the mission. She willed her eyes open and read the page again. _That_ was the order. Execute the woman in the photographs. The woman was never named on the page. She was simply referred to as "the mole" and "the target". She was a double-agent, working inside the CIA but against US interests. She had been deemed "beyond salvage". Sarah was to terminate her.

After sitting for a few minutes, Sarah looked at the other documents. The orders were sanctioned. There were partially redacted pages of evidence against the woman. Although the redaction created a fragmented impression of what the woman had done, it certainly looked like the woman was guilty as charged. Sarah went back to her orders. Graham had ordered her to become an executioner.

A Red Test. She had heard about these, first as whispers among recruits at the Farm. A test given to see if an agent had what it took to pull the trigger. Not just in self-defense or the immediate defense of others. (Sarah had already proven she could do that.) It was a test to see if you could pull the trigger in cold blood, to see if you could execute another person.

Sarah's first thought as she regained some control over herself was to run. She should just get up and get out of the hotel and vanish. Quit. Quit the whole business.

It was bad enough that her life was already a living death; she did not want to live as Death. She stood up, still holding the file. For a split second, everything hung in the balance. Her hands were already on the door handle, her eyes focused on it, even from across the room.

And then her hands were where they were, holding the file on the opposite side of the room. She could not run. This was the only life she knew, and given her childhood, almost certainly the only life she could have unless she took up her father's business and went on the grift.

Her father. She had tried to push him from her mind, as she had everything about her past. She had tried to understand her job as done for motives other than protecting him. But that was, at the end of the day, why she was standing there with a file in her hands. She was doing it to protect him. The professionalism, the control, the seeking after perfection on missions: all of that was to fend off despair, to force her attention away from who she had been, who she was, and who she was becoming. It was a strategy to keep herself putting one foot in front of the other. _One line._ It kept her moving; if she slowed, she would break, break beyond fixing.

Graham had, of course, made no mention of her father in the orders. In fact, Graham had not mentioned her father to her in a long time, and Sarah had decided that _no news was good news._ But Graham did not need to mention Jack Burton. Graham knew she knew. If she ran, who knew what would happen to her father. Was he still in danger, even in prison? The con that had put him in danger was now long over, long gone. Could she take the chance that the threat was gone and run? Maybe. Could she leave the only adult life she knew and just go? Maybe. She had money. She spent virtually nothing. She traveled on an expense account and her apartment was paid for by the CIA. She could live a year, maybe more, on what she had, if she were very frugal.

But she could not do it. She could not risk her father. And, bleak though her CIA life might be, it had become her life. She knew nothing else. She might sometimes dream of something else. But those were just dreams. Dreams. She was not a woman whose dreams came true. Sometimes she got to pretend they did, but they never really did.

She sat back down, and though her hands continued to shake, she started to work through the file more deliberately. She had her orders. Sanctioned. The woman had been judged guilty.

 _The mission. There is only the mission. Do the job. You are just an accessory to the mission, a gun. Do the job._

She rebelled. She squeezed her eyes shut again. She wanted someone to talk to, needed to talk to someone. But who?

She had no one. Had it been some other agent...But, no, it was Hannah Traylor. How could Sarah talk to _her_ about _this_? Hannah had been cheering against Sarah the entire time at the Farm. More than cheering against her - she had worked against her, made the Farm more miserable for her. One invitation to drinks could not make up for all of that, especially since Sarah was fairly sure, now that she considered it again, that Hannah would have turned the evening into a competition, probably a competition to see who would bed a particular man. Not a competition of which Sarah wanted any part.

 _Do the job. Stop thinking about it. Stop worrying about motives and reasons. Stop worrying about Hannah. Better it's her here, otherwise, your mission might fail. That is the only unacceptable outcome, Agent. Do. The. Job._

She opened her eyes, shuffling the papers in the file. There was an itinerary. The woman's habits were predictable. There was even a kill zone marked, a side street, off angle from a cafe, the only nearby business. It was closed by the time the woman walked the street as she headed home. The suggested time for termination was on the woman's walk home.

Sarah considered the data. A clean shot and there should be ample opportunity to get away from the scene, especially since she would be using a silencer. She could get into position on the edge of the small park that bordered the street, execute the woman, and then exit through the park, cross two streets, and emerge in a busy area where she should be able to hail a taxi immediately. There was nothing complicated about doing it. Except doing it. Except executing a woman she did not know and about whom she felt nothing other than a vague, distant outrage at what the woman had done - or, anyway, been judged guilty of doing. _Her actual guilt is not my concern. Not my concern. Do the job._

Sarah knew that sleep was not going to come. She put the file in her shoulder bag and went out into the Paris evening. She walked for hours, trying not to think, not to feel, not to be, except in the sense that she was locomotive, moving through space. She was an accessory to a mission. A mission. _Do the job. Move on. Do the job. Move on._ it became a sing-song, timed to her mechanical steps, a march. She marched through much of Paris; she saw none of it. A death march.

ooOoo

Hannah was in her bed, asleep, alone, when Sarah returned to the room. _No Do-Not-Disturb sign, no sock on the doorknob. But that guaranteed nothing._ She undressed quietly and climbed into her bed. Supine, she watched the room begin to fill with morning light. She felt queasy, feverish. Her body shook unpredictably, sometimes violently. She allowed herself to feel nothing. She blanked her mind. Still, sleep would not come.

And then it did, a mercy.

She tumbled into obliviousness.

ooOoo

She was standing on the street. She had somehow survived the day. But the mole would not survive the night. She saw her approaching. Mole. Traitor. Beyond salvage. Beyond.

Sarah tightened her grip on her pistol, the one that had arrived by courier at the hotel in the early afternoon. She had secreted it in her red coat. The woman reached her. It was time! Sarah could not do it. The woman stopped, kneeled down. Had she dropped something? She started to stand. There was a flash of metal in the woman's hand. Sarah's gun was out and up instantaneously. _I can't kill her. I can't kill her. I can't. Kill her._

Sarah's gun jumped and spat in her hand. A living thing spitting death. The woman's eyes went unfocused almost immediately. She never finished standing up. She sank back to her knees. Then she fell face-forward onto the sidewalk. There was something in her hand. Had it been a gun? Sarah had thought so, but in a way that took no time to register as such. She started to step toward the woman...the body...when she heard laughter and voices up the street.

No time. No time to know. What did it matter? Motives? Reasons? She was an accessory to another successful mission. That, _this_ , was what she lived for. She put the gun away and hurried through the park, away from the body, from the pooling red beneath it.

ooOoo

She never remembered the taxi ride back to the hotel. She never remembered getting to her room. Her first memory after turning away from the body was of scalding water showering on her. She was standing, fully clothed, under the steaming blast of the shower. Her gun was on the shower floor, immersed in shallow standing water. She could not bear to look at it or touch it. She wondered if the water could clean it, clean her. _Sunday school. Pontius Pilate. "I am innocent of this blood…"_ She stood beneath the water for as long as she could. Then she undressed, putting her soaking clothes in the sink. She had a flight out in a few hours. She crawled beneath the covers of her bed and pulled them over her head. Hannah was not in the room. Sarah wanted to weep; tears would not come. She could not let them. _I did the job._

ooOoo

The next day, Sarah was seated in Graham's office. She knew she looked like death warmed over. But she could not summon the energy to care, to try to hide it. She let Graham look at her. There was the briefest flash of sympathy in his eyes but then it was gone.

"I am very pleased, Agent Walker, with all of your work since the Farm. With your doing what needed to be done in Paris. The job had to be done and you did it. I...acknowledge your sacrifice." He was silent for a moment, almost as if he were taking a moment of silence for the final passing of Jenny Burton.

"But enough of that. Not something to be dwelt upon. Something to do and then forget." He gave her a significant glance before he continued. "I have good news. I can now put into place the plan I have had for you. I want you to become my good right hand, say, my... Enforcer. You will be answerable solely to me, all of your orders will originate with me. It is possible that some of the work may be...unsanctioned, off-the-book. At least at the time it is done. I will need you to trust me, trust my judgment. I need a weapon at my beck and call, someone I can trust absolutely, and who I know will get the job done. Someone who can be on the move immediately. Someone who works light and alone. I will shield you from repercussions. Anything off-books will be _off-books_ , secured and accessible only to me. I am increasing your pay grade. Your expense account, within reason, of course, is now unlimited. Once you are on a mission, it is yours to perform as you see fit. I am sure that you will act as I would have you act." He smiled at her. "This is your true graduation, Agent. Congratulations."

Sarah knew she had never agreed. But what did it matter? _One line. She could only walk it, not decide where it went._ She nodded gravely one time. A fate in slow motion. Graham's smile grew, and grew more relaxed.

"Very good. I have some good news. Your father is up for probation in a few days. I have...guaranteed he will get it. He should be out and on his own in a month or two. I will make sure we keep an eye on him for awhile, just to be sure all is well, but my information strongly suggests that those who had a vendetta against him have moved on. After all, his crime against them was only intending a crime against them, so to speak. If you would like, I can arrange for you to see him, either before he is released or after."

Sarah shook her head. Why see him? What would she tell him? She could not tell him who she was, not only because she needed to keep that secret, but also because it would lead to questions. She did not want him to know what his con had made her. Why awaken feelings that had become mostly, mercifully, dormant? Better to let him go his way.

"Alright. There are some perks of the new job at your apartment. We will do great things for the Greater Good together agent. Great things. I plan to keep you busy."

"With all due respect, sir, you have already been doing that." Sarah regretted the words but they had come unbidden.

Graham weighed her in his glance, his eyes narrowing slightly. "I apologize for the lengthy...probation, Agent. But I had to be sure you could withstand the rigors of the job. There will not be two of you. But I will sometimes need it to seem as if there are. I need someone for whom there is nothing but the job, someone for whom the job is enough. No, better, someone for whom the job is everything. I believe that is you, Agent. You have proved it." His relaxed smile returned.

Sarah agreed with him about herself, or at least she agreed with his words, if not their meaning. The job was everything to her. Not because she found it noble or exciting, but because there was literally nothing else in her life. It was _everything_ by forfeit, not by merit.

ooOoo

When she got to her apartment, she found a new set of knives and a new S&W there on her coffee table, a closet full of new, very expensive clothes. The cupboards were no longer bare. There was food in the fridge.

Then she saw it. On the breakfast counter was a set of car keys, _Porsche keys_. For a moment, she was genuinely excited. She went out into the parking lot and pushed the button on the key fob. There was a chirp. A beautiful new Porsche. She hurried back and got her sunglasses and a jacket, locked her apartment.

She almost ran to the Porsche, jumped in, and roared its engine to life. She wanted out of DC, away from Langley and her full but empty apartment. She made her way out the city, eventually onto rural mountain roads nearby in West Virginia. It was not warm enough to put the top down, but she could put her foot down, and she raced the car around the hairpin terms and up and down the roads, tearing along the guardrails, risking deep chasms. She was driving, driving away from Paris, away from all the places before it and after Leipzig. She was trying to escape from her life. But the car, as much as she already loved it, was a part of that life. She could not escape from the life while seated in the life.

Still, the car was the one good thing the life had given her. It was at least a movable cell inside her prison, and for the moment, she had the wheel.

* * *

 **A/N2** Yeah. Tune in next time as we begin a series of CAT chapters, Chapter 8, "Girls Will Be Girls". How about a review? I'd be heart-warmed.

So: when was Sarah's Red Test?

I don't mean that I don't know the canonical answer; I just wonder if it makes much sense. Canon places it five years in the past in S3.

Part of the problem with answering this question about sense is the general problem of Sarah's past. The show writers kept it as their private Pandora's box, from which they could at any point dredge up something to trouble Sarah and torment Chuck. (Remember, these are the same writers who could imagine nothing better than Shaw, which makes me believe their imaginations as wooden as their imaginative creature.)

Anyway, I don't believe there was ever a solid backstory for Sarah. The writers could get away with that because she was "a mystery". But it also left so much about the character under-interpreted.

I have decided here to move the Red Test up, to make it earlier in her CIA career. While not much really hinges on it, it seems unlikely that Sarah would have become Graham's Enforcer prior to a Red Test, and, frankly, unlikely that she would have had time to establish her intelligence-community-wide reputation (the one Casey mentions at various points in the show) if she had taken the Red Test only a couple of years before Burbank. The woman to whom Amnesiac Sarah reverts as the show ends seems to believe that she can kill, that she is willing to kill - and in cold blood. So, too, the Chuck-less Sarah of vs. Phase Three. And the Flash Sarah of early S1.

We could split hairs (to save starting them?) about killings in self-defense vs. executions as ways of gaining a reputation, but that discussion strikes me as subject to the law of diminishing fleas. Sarah calls herself an assassin. I will take her at her word and I will suppose she took on that mantle fairly early, even before her CAT days. I also think this makes better sense of the little we know of the CATs dynamic.

By the way, I have also more or less excised the Harvard/Secret Service stuff from her history here, since it plays little, really no role, in what happens in canon or in self-reportings there from Sarah.


	8. Girls Will Be Girls (One)

**A/N1** And so begins a new story in this story sequence. This one will take five chapters to tell.

I will confess that I dislike _Chuck vs. The CAT Squad._ It is one of the worst episodes of the show. The idea (setting aside the _Charlie's Angels_ homage, cough!) was good - to give a glimpse, finally, into Sarah's past. But, gah!, it was poorly done. Needing now to retrofit (in the peculiar way that I am) that episode does not make me happy. But, that said, I am happy that the slight change in mood at the end of the previous chapter becomes less slight here, at least after some initial contextualizing.

The title of this mission is an obvious parody of 'Boys will be boys", with a nod to Cindy Lauper. This chapter lets the CATs out of the bag. (I know, I know, but if Beckman can say, "The CATs are back…")

Oh, this chapter has a complicated structure. There is more than one kind of scene-break. I trust it will be clear enough, though.

Please drop me a review or PM. I want to know your reaction. I try always to respond to everyone.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER EIGHT

 _Girls Will Be Girls (Part One)_ :

 _Assembly_

* * *

I am the girl of 100 lists  
From what I shall wear  
To who I have kissed  
Check items off  
Let nothing be missed  
Sing I to myself and my 100 lists  
\- The Go-Go's, _Girl of 100 Lists_

* * *

Sarah was sitting on a park bench in Miami, groggily sipping an Americano. The hot, bitter brew matched her mood, and it seemed to ease slightly the hangover headache that was making it hard for her to face the sun. She stared at the ground, idly digging a trench in the soft earth with her heel.

It all came apart. It started with promise, or promise enough, although she was unsure then - and still unsure now, after the ruination of the promise - what Graham had really been thinking. A team of female agents with an embarrassing codename: CATS. It had seemed bizarre at the time, and it seemed even more bizarre now, almost a year after it had begun. She could easily remember how it began.

* * *

Sarah was sleepwalking through Langley, her body heading to Graham's office, her mind lolling elsewhere.

It had been months since her last visit there. ( _It's been over four years since I was recruited. Time flies when you're having no fun._ ) She had been at Langley only a few times since Graham installed her as his Enforcer. That had been the beginning of what Sarah thought of as _the red blur._ Her Red Test supplied the pattern for several missions that followed. Not all, she was not a full-time executioner, a full-time assassin. Often enough, she was again a glorified thief. And once in a while, she had been tasked with infiltration or seduction, assigned a mark. But her understanding with Graham about such missions kept them infrequent. It also insured that when they occurred, she had adequate backup and a reliable exit strategy. She had never had done more than awaken a mark's lust, making promises she did not keep. But the termination missions came when they came, and she did as she was ordered.

Graham had been true to his word. He kept her so busy that it seemed like there were two of her, or maybe more. Her earlier minor legend began to grow. Graham's Wildcard Enforcer, the Ice Queen. She became the CIA's bogeyman: she became the shadow agents feared to find hidden in their own shadows. Graham had once quipped to her that she was responsible for the smaller-than-usual number of double-agents suspected in Langley, in the CIA. No one wanted to be a double-agent with such a single-minded Enforcer in play. The mere threat of her was a powerful deterrent. Her success rate decreased her mission rate.

Sarah had once heard a group of recruits visiting Langley joking that if you stared in the mirror and repeated 'Ice Queen' three times, she would show up and put a round in your head. They'd never imagined that the blue-eyed blonde seated in the waiting area was the bogeyman they joked about. That night, Sarah had stood in her apartment bathroom and repeated her title three times. Nothing happened. Nothing stirred. She'd been a little disappointed; she had hoped to be able to see herself as the recruits imagined her, a Valkyrie dispensing destinies, but she had seen only a too-thin, demoralized woman blinking back in the color-leaching bathroom light.

 _The red blur._ She kept herself focused on the missions. On orders. She did not question them. She executed them. _Executed_. _Cruel double-duty word_. She did not try to work out Graham's agenda. She did not try to discern patterns in his orders, termination or otherwise. She did what was necessary and then moved on to face new necessities. She left her emotions alone, abandoned; she forsook her own affective responses. She had tried to terminate them, to kill them off, but she had finally realized, starting at the time of her Red Test, that although she could deny what she felt, interpose a distance, as it were, between herself and her feelings, she could not make herself feel _nothing_. So she had been learning how to prevent responses to her own responses, not so much to benumb herself, as to benumb herself to herself, to create a bloodless, second-order numbness to her bloodied first-order emotional life. She was at once both Cinderella and her wicked stepmother: miserable among the cinders but unmoved by the misery.

She was back at Langley because Graham declared that she had had enough. He demanded that she return, ordered her from the field. She had nearly been killed on her last mission. Her planning, as usual, had been excruciatingly thorough and deliberate. She had made her lists and checked them again and again. But her mark had somehow deciphered what was happening, and he had attacked Sarah out of the blue. She had not seen it coming and did not suspect it. She was so tired - tired both from missions and from her constant vigilance over herself - and the mark was able to stab her before she could react. She did react; the mark was dead. Luckily, the mark had not been particularly skilled with knives. He managed to open a long gash in Sarah's upper arm, but nothing more.

The stitches were already out, but Graham had been worried about her before the mission. They still talked on the phone at least once per mission, sometimes more, and evidently, Graham had been worried about her increasing uncommunicativeness. She was never long-winded of course, but she had almost always been willing to talk about missions. She had not noticed, but she had stopped being willing to do much of that. Graham had noticed, though, and he realized she needed a change. He had pushed her hard for a long time. So her newest order was to return to Langley.

And in Langley she now was. She had reached Graham's office. His assistant promptly showed her in. Graham stood and gave her a hard look, head to toe, assessing her. He gestured for her to sit and she did, careful not to use her bad arm as she lowered herself into the chair. It was nearly healed but she was still favoring it. Graham noticed.

"Agent Walker, I know I have...pushed you." He looked at Sarah, but not apologetically. She looked back at him. "But I believe you have wanted to be pushed…" He paused, waiting for more of a reaction. Over the years, she had become more comfortable around him, talking to him, and she had a habit of blurting things out in their face-to-face meetings.

"You pushed me into wanting to be pushed, sir…" She kept looking at him. He smiled - or at any rate, he bared his teeth in her direction. He neither agreed with her nor disagreed with her.

There was a long moment of silence between them. Then Graham spoke: "Have you seen your dad?"

She had not expected that question. "Um...No...I haven't talked to him. He hasn't talked to me, either."

"Could he? How could he find you?" Sarah said nothing, but she took Graham's point. Unless Graham had told her father, her father had no idea what had happened to her, had no idea that she was now Sarah Walker. He could not find her if he wanted to. Especially since she was almost never in the US, but undercover, on the move, in other places around the globe.

"I guess there would be no way, sir."

"No, but I should tell you that I have made sure your father knows that you are alive," he paused and glanced at her arm, "and well. But he does not know who I am. I have had the information relayed to him through others. He does not know...your name or what you...do."

Sarah was not sure how she felt about that. She was not sorry her father knew she was alive, well. But she was not overjoyed about Graham making decisions like that for her. She had begun to wonder lately - she could not keep herself from it as much as she tried - about how covered with Graham's fingerprints her life really was.

"If you want to contact him, I can give you the information needed…"

"Thanks, sir."

Another silence.

"I have a new mission for you. A new _sort_ of mission. I have kept you alone long enough. I'm going to put you on a team of spies, all women. I am assembling the other members now. You will meet them in Miami the day after tomorrow."

Sarah chuckled despite herself. It was unlike Graham to make a joke. "No, really, sir, what's next for me?"

Graham did not chuckle; Graham did not smile. Sarah realized he was serious. She had a sinking feeling. _A four-woman team? Jesus, just add one more and we could be the Go-Go's. Graham will probably dress us all in matching outfits._

"The team will not be permanent. And, while you are a member of the team, I may...I will need you from time to time to do missions alone, missions for me. But I will try to keep those at a minimum, only using you for the most crucial missions. The others I will find other agents for."

Sarah opened her mouth to protest, but Graham's hand shot up, palm out, stopping her. "I know this may not seem like a good idea to you. But I think you need a break, a change. I'm not demoting you. You have been everything I hoped you would be. You are still my Enforcer and you will be my Enforcer after the team is disbanded. But even you cannot keep up this pace, Agent Walker, and I think you know that."

She did. She knew that. She knew she was exhausted, alone, knotted up inside in almost impossible snarls. She needed a slower pace, maybe someone to talk to, a chance for the knots to loosen. The problem was that she also needed to keep from thinking and feeling. Being exhausted helped with that. She was unsure how to keep thinking and feeling from happening if she slowed down, rested - if she...talked, unknotted. Who knew what might percolate up from those parts of herself she studiously ignored? Her internal pressures could diamondize coal. What happened if she released the pressures? She had no answers.

"Two of your three team members are CIA, Zondra Rizzo, and Amy Edmundson. Both are skillful, successful agents. The other team member, Carina Miller, is DEA, and they are lending her to us."

"The DEA, sir?" Sarah found the whole idea of the team bizarre, but why bring in an outsider, an outside agency? That was a formula for complications, problems, and failure. Why do it?

"Yes, the DEA. She is actually trailing the thread that brings the four of you together. There is a new power, a new organization, forming in South America. The details are nebulous but troubling. Terror seems to be the goal, maybe even terror-for-hire - unfortunately, now a growth industry.

"But the organization needs funds, and so it has made a forceful, bloody foray into South American drugs. Frankly, my hope, our hope here at the Agency, was that they would overstep, and the older, more established drug cartels would stomp them. The older cartels are bad news, no doubt, but they are predictable and encumbered. This new organization is not. They are unpredictable and quick. Miller has been tracking their drug forays."

"I understand. Still, a team of four women agents, sir...that seems…"

Graham smiled now. "...Silly?"

Sarah nodded her head, returning half Graham's smile to him.

"Yes, Agent Walker, I realize that it does. But the team has potential for this unique situation. First, your cover: you will be posing as four old friends, wealthy and idle recent graduates from Harvard. You were sorority sisters in Alpha Phi. Your parents have gifted you a lengthy vacation as a graduation present. You will begin that vacation in Miami; I anticipate the team will relocate to South America eventually, although events will decide.

"Second, although we know little about this organization, rumors are that its hierarchy is all male. An evil Our Gang, a He-Man, Woman-Haters Club." Graham paused, savoring his ancient pop culture reference. "Agents Miller and Edmundson are both agents with a history of...seduction success. Rizzo, like you, has worked...well, let's say, more with weapons than with marks. Your combined skills should make you very effective. And there is no doubt, if you will forgive me for being...male, that your...combined beauty will draw considerable attention."

Graham stood up and handed Sarah a file that had been on his desk. "Here's some preliminary information. You will be the AIC, naturally. I should warn you that Agents Rizzo and Edmundson both know who you are." One of Sarah's eyebrows went up and Graham noticed. "Yes, they know you are my Enforcer. They know nothing about your history before the Agency, however, or about your family." Sarah's eyebrow went down and she nodded, relieved, while hiding a small flare of accompanying frustration. _Oh, good, now they will either be terrified of me or determined to unseat me, best me, compete with me. Damn it. No way to start a team._ "You are not alone on this mission, Agent Walker. Allow the others...to shoulder some of the load. I know it is not exactly a vacation. Think of it as a working vacation." _Vacation. Vacate. Vacuum. What's the term? 'Horror Vacui'. I don't want a vacation. I want to work. I don't want friends. I can't have friends. No ties. No feelings. But most of all, no time for reflection or consideration. I need to be busy._

Graham sat down and focused on his computer screen, reading, now finished with the discussion. Sarah got up and left. Neither spoke. But Sarah talked to herself silently all the way out of Langley.

* * *

 **To:** Langston Graham, Director

 **From:** Donald Melden, Agent

 **Re:** Agent Sarah Walker, Unofficial Evaluation Report

Langston,

I reviewed the materials you sent me and then destroyed them, as you asked. I knew you were planning something like this for Agent Walker. Frankly, I feared it. (I presume on our old friendship in saying that, I know.) I have also conducted surveillance on Agent Walker at various times over the past few months, as you directed me to do, both in DC and on missions.

I concede your instincts about her were right. She is a spy of tremendous talent. I have never seen her equal. She is the best we have. Her wiring is complicated; she can do the wetwork you have required of her and still function. Although she clearly attempts to limit human contact on missions, spending almost all her time alone, she has not lost her interest in it. She craves it. Case in point: on her most recent mission, she spent several minutes one morning helping a little girl find her lost teddy bear. The little girl had lost it in the hotel lobby while waiting for her mother to finish a job interview with the hotel manager. After finding the teddy bear for the little girl, Agent Walker sat and talked with her for a long time, waiting with her for her mother to finish the interview. The little girl was charmed by her. As you know (since you gave the order), later that same day, she terminated a double-agent.

My view is that she is nearing burn-out. Unlike other agents performing extended wetwork, she has not lost her humanity (even if she tries to hide it): she shows no signs of sociopathy that so often claims those agents. (Though I hesitate to make jokes about this, I would say that Walker compartmentalizes like a submariner.) She is remarkably resilient - you were right about that, too. But her talent and resiliency do not make her invulnerable to burn-out from sheer exhaustion. She will keep working as long as you keep giving orders. Her drive toward perfection will kill her if a mistake made in exhaustion does not. She makes the over-prepared look slapdash. You need to slow her pace, Langston; you need to change her pace. Give her something else to do, a different kind of mission, a partner or partners. I know how you 'play' chess, you never take your hand off your pieces. If you must keep yours on her, then find a way to make it less heavy for a while.

I am not happy about my part in this young woman's life, but you know that. So please listen to me and let me do her a good turn. You have manipulated more of her life than she knows, and this will be another manipulation. But at least it will be a manipulation for her benefit, not someone else's. Give her a break.

Donald

 **Secure Email: End**

* * *

Back in her apartment, since she was, as always, already packed, Sarah stretched out on the couch ( _not my couch, the couch_ ) with the file Graham had given her. She rehearsed to herself that what was on paper was never the real person ( _How I hope that is true!_ ) and, after glancing at their photos, she began to read about her new team members.

Amy and Zondra were both actually older than Sarah by a few years. Each had gone to college and been recruited there. Amy had actually been a college cheerleader. Zondra had been a small college athlete, a sprinter and a good one. Amy had studied Hotel and Restaurant Management ( _How does that get you to the CIA recruitment table?_ ), Zondra had been an International Business and Spanish double-major. Both had strong academic records. But the two women seemed very different, despite some similarities in background. Amy was 'a people person'; she had been in every campus organization, it seemed; Zondra seemed to be a loner, belonging only to the track team.

Miller had been a college student too, although she had not graduated. (She was the oldest of the four.) She had left college for reasons the file did not make clear. Afterward, she had worked for a time in New York, as a waitress at a cocktail bar, before she had finished her degree at night school. It was unclear how she ended up working for the DEA, but she had.

She was a star for them, but she was also clearly a professional's nightmare. Her missions were successful, but they careened crazily out of control, and it often seemed more due to luck than to skill that she had succeeded. Her successes kept her from having to deal with the often far-reaching, destructive ripples of her chaotic approach to her job. Just reading about her made Sarah anxious. The little personal information in the file painted her as a look-a-like to Heather and Hannah. _And of course, the universe would make sure that some incarnation of the Eternal Skank is always involved in my life._

ooOoo

The day after the next, the evening, found Sarah in Miami. She had been the first to arrive at the posh beach condo they were to stay in. It had a bedroom for each of them, two bathrooms, a massive shared living area and kitchen, all framed by large windows. A large deck with outdoor chairs and couches and a fire pit completed the place, adding a huge extra amount of living space. Sarah had stayed in some nice places as part of covers - but she thought this was the nicest, the most extravagant. She had claimed the smallest bedroom by throwing her suitcase on the bed, and she had quickly put on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. Barefoot, she walked through the condo, out onto the deck and down the stairs. She stood for a moment with her toes in the still-warm sand.

The sky and the horizon were almost the same shade of deep blue, making it seem that there was no horizon, no edge to the world. She took a breath and walked out to the water. She walked along the edge, putting her feet just within reach of the remnants of the waves. The blues surrounding her became darker, navy. She found a spot to sit, and watched as the navy sea-sky darkened to a blue-black more black than blue. Without realizing it, she had relaxed. She did not feel the normal clinch in her stomach, the tightness in her shoulders. People were moving about on the beach, but she did not track them. She leaned back, extending her arms behind her, turning her elbows and hands away from her, and allowing her weight to rest on them. She peered into the dark, for once not afraid of what she might see there.

"Hey, Sarah?" A soft voice from beside her, a bantering tone. She had not heard anyone approach; she had been too focused on the sound of the water. "Amy, Zondra - over here."

Sarah stood up. Carina Miller was standing beside her, staring at her. Amy and Zondra walked up a moment later.

Amy stepped to Sarah and extended her hand. "Hey, I'm Amy. Good to meet you, Sarah." Sarah nodded, shook the extended hand, but said nothing.

Zondra took her turn. "Zondra." Another nod, more handshaking.

"And I am Carina. They told me you were the strong, silent type." Sarah saw an impish look flash on Carina's face, and the next thing Sarah knew, Carina was hugging her. Sarah just stood there, her arms hanging limply at her sides, encircled in Carina's long arms. Carina chuckled as she pulled away, delighted by Sarah's awkwardness. "Good to meet you, killer. Since we are going to be teammates, Amy and Zondra gave me the 411 on the drive from the airport." Her voice became, not loud, but expansive. "I hugged an honest-to-God _legend_ …my, oh, my!" She shot a glance at Amy and Zondra. "I get the _Ice Queen_ bit now."

 _Damn._

ooOoo

They walked back to the condo together, Amy and Carina chattering excitedly about previous trips to Miami (Carina had worked there often). Zondra listened closely but said nothing. Sarah did the same.

When they got back up on the deck, Zondra lit the fire pit. Soon, it was glowing orange. The evening was by no means cold, but it had cooled off. Sarah went and got a light sweater. She was tempted to just stay in her room, but she knew she was going to have to get to know the women. She was AIC. She could not hide away.

When she went outside, pulling her sweater closed by stretching one side over the other, she found the three women in chairs around the fire pit. There was an empty chair for her. There were also several bottles of beer and a couple of bottles of wine and a glass on a tray. Sarah grabbed a bottle of beer and sat down. She opened it and looked up. Three sets of eyes focused on her, waiting. She had no idea what to say. After a thick, close moment, she finally said something: "So, Carina, why don't you brief us on the latest connected with the mission?" The three women looked at each other without responding, then back to her.

After a moment, Carina laughed. "Look, Sarah. Tonight the girls get to know each other. There'll be enough time to talk about the bad guys tomorrow. I just want to drink my beer and look at the stars - and tell and be told stories. None of us has ever gotten a chance to work on a team like this. We all want to do well," Amy and Zondra nodded, "but we also want to enjoy this as much as we can. So, _boss,_ " Carina emphasized the word, but with no smirk in her tone, "can we have the night off?"

Sarah was glad it was dark. She felt her blush burning her face. She could not remember a girls' night. And that was because she had never had one, not like this. She did not know what to say, so she toasted the team with her bottle and took a sip of it. The atmosphere immediately opened up; everyone relaxed and imitated Sarah's gesture. Carina leaned forward, her long fingers dangling her beer bottle by its mouth. She began conspiratorially: "So let me tell you about the first time I was in Miami…"

Sarah sat back, sipped her beer again and listened.

 _Maybe this will be okay...Maybe it will be good._

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for Chapter 9, "Girls Will Be Girls (Two)". The squad begins its work.

I thank _RC1701_ for a useful discussion of Sarah and Carina, and of the CATs. A comment he made about his headcanon for the CATs I have transmuted here into the cover story they are working under. A nod in RC's direction. Oh, and while I am thanking folks, thanks to my long-suffering pre-readers, _David Carner_ and _WvonB_. They are to blame for nothing but they help me keep writing. Thanks to Grayroc, who has pitched in too.


	9. Girls Will Be Girls (Two)

**A/N1** More CATs. Lots of talk.

Thanks for reading and for the reviews and PMs. With the Red Test behind us, we are on the upward path, but there are still serious difficulties ahead before we get to Burbank.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER NINE

 _Girls Will Be Girls (Part Two)_ :

 _Story Club_

* * *

Don't you know  
if you don't swim  
you'll go  
to the bottom of the ocean,  
and no one there is gonna make you  
be the things  
that you, you really need to be,  
like something that will stay  
if everything turns grey

One day you'll wake up  
at night  
and swear you'll feel your skin  
is walking right out on you,  
walking right out on you  
\- Nico Stai, _The Bottom of the Ocean_

* * *

The next morning Sarah woke face down in her own pillow. It smelled slightly of beer, and then she realized, to her chagrin, that it was her drool on the pillow that carried the odor. She was still in her shorts and t-shirt. She only vaguely remembered getting to bed. She remembered an increasing line of empty beer bottles around the fire pit, the orange coals visible, smoldering through the brown glass: Carina narrating one scandalous tale after another: Amy giggling: Zondra's occasional, surprising horse-laugh: Sarah's own quiet, body-shaking chuckles.

She couldn't dredge up the details of Carina's stories, but she could remember the gist. Almost always, there was a mission, a man and a mess. Sarah's impression of Carina as Hannah was not wrong, although it was also not right. They shared certain obvious...obsessions, but there was a heartless usury in Hannah's relationships with men that was not present in Carina's shameless enjoyment of them. But Sarah was curious about Carina. She detected an undertone in Carina's stories - of what, she could not quite say. Whatever it was, it suggested that Carina's present habits trailed a history. Sarah was in no hurry to have any of the others, maybe especially Carina, prying into her past, so she had no plan to try to figure it out, but there was an unexpected tang of mystery to Carina. She was not, or anyway, was not entirely, the superficial libertine she seemed to want to believe she was.

Sarah rolled over and then moaned softly when it felt like the insides of her head refused to roll with her. Her headache was serious. She put a hand on her forehead and shook her head, hand resting in place...very gently. Sarah really did not drink - unless a mission required it, and then she would never drink much (even if she pretended to) - but she had let herself go a little last night. She was a lightweight, that much was clear. She had not been the chief emptier of bottles and yet she felt like... _this_.

Zondra had not talked much more than Sarah, so almost not at all, but she had been keenly involved, listening to Carina, asking a few questions, and watching Amy and Sarah. Amy had giggled, tinkling like a music box, almost constantly. She had told a story or two during moments when Carina decided to finish a beer, but her stories were not as well told, not as interesting as Carina's. She seemed to figure that out and gave up, yielding the spotlight entirely to Carina.

Blinking, Sarah looked at her watch. 10 am. She could not remember the last time she had missed the dawn. Usually, she was up before the sun, hydrating, working out, eating, drinking coffee over an open file, studying, prepping, taking notes, making lists, committing things to memory. She and the others had agreed to meet at 11 am to start working on the mission, so Sarah had time to stay in bed for a while. She could hear the shower in the nearest bathroom, so she decided to wait until it was unoccupied.

She looked out the window at the blue-gray of the ocean, so different from its blue-black of the night before. She could see gulls turning to the wind, weightless and effortlessly aflight. She felt lighter, despite her headache, almost as if she had found a way to turn to the wind, to be buoyed aloft instead of driven aground. She sighed, almost in satisfaction. A pause. Then she sighed, almost in frustration.

All of the talk of men last night had been difficult for Sarah. She was younger than the other three women, but not so much that she should feel like a child, and yet she often had. Between the Farm and her Red Test, Sarah had been with three men, each exactly once. After her Red Test, she had been unable even to consider sex. She felt unfit for human contact. After her installment as Graham's Enforcer, that feeling had intensified. She had taken on the Ice Queen title again as she had worn it at the Farm. Truthfully, it had not been that much of a loss. She had hopes for sex that had been far from realized. Regret or disappointment had colored her few mornings-after.

And, besides, she felt too _close_ to death, too _akin_ to it, most of the time, to feel attractive, to _want_ to be wanted. Sometimes at night, she dreamt she was a corpse, mobile and vulnerable, somehow, but still dead, prowling graveyards. If there was ever a powerful anaphrodisiac, dreaming yourself a corpse was one. Necrotic - not _erotic_. Most of the time for the past months, the thought of being close to a man filled her with disrelish, a disrelish for herself, for what she was - for sharing, or trying to share, _that_ with some unsuspecting man.

The sound of the gulls pulled Sarah from her reflections. The shower had stopped running. She got up, gathered the necessaries, and headed to the bathroom. She needed to be up, busy, not abed, reflecting. No good would come of that.

ooOoo

The four women gathered in the living room to discuss the mission. Sarah forced herself to take the lead, feeling awkward and unsure of herself, but doing her best to keep it from showing.

"So, Carina, what is the sitrep?"

Carina's gaze chuckled, but she kept an otherwise straight face. "The _sitrep_ is this: changes in patterns of drug arrivals, drug traffic in the city of Miami, and in the chemical composition of recent product all suggest a new player. Professional, serious, careful...smart. Well organized. Other than changes in patterns, so far all we have are rumors of a new player, based in South America, deliberately challenging the more established organizations, cartels. But I have an informant, generally reliable, who claims that not only is a new shipment from this group imminent, it is to be accompanied by some of the players. This is a big push, an effort to move off the beach, so to speak, and deeper into the mainland.

"But the rumors also suggest that the drugs are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. This group has other aims, geopolitical aims, terrorist aims - that's supposed to be their goal. The drugs are to finance terror.

"That's why our team has been formed. As you know from your files or earlier briefings," she paused and swept the room with her gaze, "since I assume you each talked to Director Graham," there were three nods, "we are following the drugs for the sake of preventing this organization from succeeding in its ambitions. Of course, we want to shut down the drugs too."

She stopped for a moment. When no one spoke, she continued. "We need to get to the players, whoever they are. Up until now, we've not been able to get any clear idea who they might be. They work through blind intermediaries: the pushers on the street have no idea whose stuff they are pushing. The people supplying the pushers don't know whose stuff they are supplying. It's been like climbing ladders to dead ends. But what's coming this weekend has a different feel. Why they are making the big push _now_ is unclear, but it the intel seems good; they are coming in strength, in person. My guess is that they are coming to re-establish their distribution network, but that will require some face-to-face, hands-on work. They'll have to step out of the shadows, if only briefly. My informant claims that he has been told to expect contact at Dream Nightclub on Saturday night. Personal contact. It could be another blind intermediary, of course. But eventually, we will find someone who isn't blind and follow that person back to one of the players. Who knows? Maybe one of the players will make contact. Something's brewing..."

Carina looked at Sarah, yielding the floor. Sarah took over. "Ok, so, Carina, your informant. Is this guy trustworthy?"

Carina shrugged. "As informants go, yes. I've been dangling a certain... _carrot_ in front of him for a while," she let her gaze run along the length of her own body, "and he _really_ wants that carrot. Not so much that he'll get himself killed - even _I'm_ not quite that attractive - but short of dying, he's...um...dying to get it...the carrot. Me. So, yes, I trust him within reason. He's motivated."

Sarah nodded. "So, our plan is to be there the night the informant is contacted, and we are going to attempt to attract the notice of the person who does the contacting?"

Now Carina nodded. "Yes, that's about it. Given the four of us, we should have _something_ he likes. Maybe multiple somethings. But, yes, standard seduction gambit. But we need to be sure to identify the person who makes contact and we need to make sure we tempt him to stay at Dream Club for a while."

Amy jumped in. "So why are we sitting here on a _Tuesday_ morning if nothing happens until Saturday?"

Sarah answered. "Because we need to be in place, to have established a reputation according to our cover, before Saturday. We don't want our first exposure to Miami nightlife to be on Saturday night."

That had clearly been the answer Amy was hoping for. "Oh, goodie, party time!"

Sarah shook her head. " _Cover_ party time. We need to be in control, careful, even while we seem anything but that. According to the information Graham gave me, there should be clothes arriving soon, multiple outfits in our sizes, so we can look the part.

Sarah stood. "Before I flew down, I made extensive notes on Harvard, the surrounding area, Alpha Phi (our supposed sorority) and other things." She walked around the room, handing a small stack of papers to each woman. "Before we go out tonight, I need you each to be sure you are clear about your individual cover and our collective cover. After dinner, we will reconvene and go over all of that. We need to be prepared."

Sarah saw Amy look at Carina and roll her eyes. Carina shrugged. Sarah let the moment pass. But then Amy objected. " _Look at us_. The only preparations we need are high-enough heels and short-enough skirts. No one is going to be listening to what we _say_. This," she held up the stack of papers, "seems like...overkill." Her emphasis on the final syllable of the final word was audible.

Carina, emboldened by Amy's objection, added her opinion. "Look, Sarah, I know you are AIC, but I work the way I work. I make my own luck."

Sarah had expected pushback, so she was not surprised. But she was not going to back down. She might be the youngest of the four, but she was who she was, Graham's Enforcer. She was very good at her job. She had been at it longer than any of them. " _Luck loves skill_ , Carina, it does not love bravado, and skill involves preparation.

"I am alive because I prepare. And, as you say, I _am_ AIC. We do this my way. My way is by the book, serious prep, serious cover work. As little left to chance as possible. I am not here for a real party; I am here for a real mission. When we are in the condo, we can relax, enjoy ourselves, but not in public, not at the clubs. Outside these walls, we are at work, and we have to remember that, or we will fail, or even get ourselves or someone else hurt."

"I didn't figure that hurting other people would matter much to _you_ , Walker." Zondra. These were her first words of the morning.

The words went through Sarah, pierced her. She turned on Zondra. "What's _that_ mean?"

Zondra looked at her blandly, unfazed by Sarah's obvious anger. "You are _who_ you are, Walker; you are _what_ you are."

Sarah reminded herself of those facts daily but having someone else remind her hurt her more than she was prepared to face. She wanted to leave the room, regroup. But that would not work. She had to face this and the hurt of it. _Who am I? What am I?_

Sarah looked harder at Zondra. She saw that beneath the bland challenge there was another layer, a complicated admixture of puzzlement and apprehension. She then saw the same admixture reflected on Carina and Amy's faces too. While they were not _afraid_ of Sarah _per se_ , they did not really know what to make of her. Of someone like her. None of them, not even Zondra, performed terminations, did the sort of wetwork Sarah (sometimes) did. Carina had half-jokingly called her 'killer' the night before; Amy had emphasized the 'kill' in 'overkill'; Zondra was now testing her, trying to plumb the killer's remaining humanity, if any remained.

How could Sarah respond? She could not explain, would not share her past, describe the path that led her here, even if it might have exculpated her.

Maybe the only thing worse than seeming monstrous would be seeming pitiable. She made herself stare into Zondra's staring brown eyes.

"Yes, I am who I am. I have done what I have done. My reputation outsizes the facts, but there are facts. I am a trained assassin. I have performed assassinations, terminations. I have done my job. And that job is classified. Only Graham can give me permission to talk about it. Still, I will tell you this, but I will not repeat it, and I will deny it if you tell anyone I said it. And I will not have conversations about it. I do my job; I don't like my job." She stopped. They had not expected any personal revelation - particularly not that one. She began again. "So, yes, I would like to avoid _anyone_ getting hurt."

Like the night before around the fire pit, there was a palpable shift in mood, as if the living room itself had exhaled a breath it did not recognize it was holding.

"Ok," Amy chirped, standing up suddenly with her papers in her hand. Zondra and Carina both began to look through their stacks. "Can we order in for lunch?"

Sarah smiled, taking a breath. "Sure."

ooOoo

Lunch was pleasant, with Carina and Amy telling more stories. Although neither Sarah nor Zondra said much, both interacted with the stories as they had the night before, laughing and gasping at the right moments. They separated after lunch, each to her own room, to prepare.

Later in the afternoon, Sarah heard a knock on her door. She got up and opened it. Zondra was standing there in socks and running clothes, holding a pair of running shoes.

"Going for a run. Wanna come?" Sarah had been glad for a few hours of solitude. It was what she was used to. But she was glad for the interruption, for the chance to do something physical, since she had not kept her routine that morning and was getting a touch of cabin fever

"Yes, that'd be good. Give me a minute." Zondra went up the hallway toward the living room. Sarah quickly donned her own running gear and shoes. Zondra was waiting for her at the foot of the deck stairs. "Should we invite the others?"

"Napping," was Zondra's response. She gave Sarah a look and turned and started jogging down toward the beach. Sarah followed. Zondra turned them parallel to the water and they ran together as the sun began its slow-motion melt into the water.

They did not speak. But they seemed to understand one another. They jogged, then sprinted, then jogged. The sprints were close, with Sarah sometimes edging out Zondra (her longer legs carrying her) and Zondra sometimes edging out Sarah (her sprinter's form helping her cope with the sand). They sprinted one final time, with Zondra winning, then they slowed to a jog, then a walk. The condo was not far away.

"So you _don't_ like the job." Zondra was asserting, not asking. She did not look toward Sarah but instead faced the watercolor sunset. Sarah did not respond. "Gotta be a story there. I'm not asking you to tell me. I don't _want_ you to tell me. Everyone's got their shit. But I want you to know that I know. Virtually no one does that job unless they like it, or secretly like it. I believe you don't. So - gotta be a story there." There was no pity in Zondra's tone. In fact, her tone was flat, except for a faint note of fellow-feeling.

They kicked off their shoes and pulled off their socks before climbing up to the deck. When they got on the deck, they could see a truck parked in the front of the condo. On its side was the logo of a high-end Miami boutique. Inside, there were two long racks of clothes. Zondra looked at Sarah. "Clothes have arrived."

They had. But also weapons and communications equipment. Everything they were likely to need for the mission. After the boutique truck left, another arrived with groceries. When that was done, the women worked together making a salad for dinner.

They'd get ready afterward, then check their prep. They were heading out that night, to Story Nightclub. They would not go to Dream until Saturday. They needed to establish that _the girls were in town._

ooOoo

They were dressed to kill. _Well, not really,_ Sarah hoped _._ But they looked so good they were waved past the waiting crowd and right into Story Club. The club was huge. Five bars and a massive dance floor. The midweek crowd was surprisingly heavy. The women created a stir from the moment they walked in. But Sarah had made it clear. This foray into the clubs was about being seen. They danced together and drank (less than it seemed) together. They also fended off numerous incursions by men, targeting one or more of them. After three hours, it was clear that the cover was established. Bartenders had been told who they were, where they were from, what they were doing - in Miami. They saw the bartenders talking to others. Word was spreading visibly and virally. Established: _the girls were in town_.

ooOoo

When they got back to the condo, late, Amy and Zondra went to bed. Sarah, too unused to scenes like the one they had been part of to just shake it off, felt pent up, too wired to sleep. She put on her sweater and went out on the deck. Carina was standing by the railing, looking off into the dark distance.

Sarah walked to join her but simply stood beside her without comment. Carina had been a whirling, dancing dervish at the club, the focal point of much of the dance floor's male attention. She had seemed larger than life beneath those spinning, flashing lights. But the woman at the railing looked wan, frail, tired. Unhappy. Carina wiped her index finger under each eye and then turned to Sarah.

"Words aren't your thing, huh?"

Sarah shrugged. Carina laughed. "Good answer."

They stood silently for several minutes. Carina: "So, this stoic thing you've got going on. You're good at it. Is it you or the job?"

Sarah twisted her lips to the side. It took her a long time to answer. "Both."

"So you and Zondra. Athletic bonding?"

"Maybe."

"You know, you make a headstone seem positively loquacious."

Sarah huffed. "'Loquacious'?"

"Hey, I went to college, even if it wasn't really Harvard. I graduated. In fact, I graduated smart."

Sarah surprised herself. She asked a question. "But you dropped out for a while?"

Carina looked at her. "Damn files." She was quiet for a moment, looking down at her hands now gripping the railing. "Yes, I dropped out."

Sarah nodded but asked no other question. Carina seemed disquieted, upset. She put her hands on her cheeks, dragging them slowly down, elongating her features momentarily, looking sadder than before, then interlacing her fingers and resting her joined hands on the rail. "I was thinking about those days, actually."

Sarah turned to face Carina. Carina went on. "You told us something and said you would not talk about it anymore. Will you allow me to do the same?" Sarah made a sound of agreement. Carina lifted an eyebrow but said nothing. "I guess telling you would be safe. I have a feeling you are all untold secrets, Sarah Walker, Enforcer."

Carina gazed off into the dark distance again. "I dropped out of school to get married." Sarah felt her expression slacken in surprise. Carina noted it. "Right. That's what everyone thought. I was a party girl at school. No, that's not quite it. I was _the_ party girl at school. Until I met _him_. Then everything changed. Everything I thought I knew I realized I did not know. Things I thought I could not feel I felt." She looked at Sarah. "Never underestimate what one person can do to your life, Sarah. He _reoriented_ me. He graduated and, just after his graduation, he proposed. I said _yes_ \- zero hesitation, all in.

"I quit with a year of school to go. We got married and moved to New York. He had a promising job, the stock market. But his job took so much of his time. That was okay, he was worth waiting for, amazing even in small amounts.

"He knew who I was - who I had been at school - but he never seemed to care. Until a woman he worked with got interested in him. He told her some things about me, not meaning any harm, and she worked out for herself who I was at school. So, she started planting seeds in his mind. Asking him if he knew where I was when he was at work, what I was doing. I never thought he was suspicious of me, so I did not worry about where I went. I thought he knew I loved him, would never hurt him." She lurched to a halt for a moment.

"Anyway, I made the mistake of meeting an old friend from school, a male friend, a guy I slept with for a while, and the woman happened to be at the bar. My friend and I were laughing and talking, and I am...handsy. The woman took pictures. It was all innocent but the photos and the backstory, as she twisted it, made it seem like it wasn't."

"Too late for _Long-Story-Short_ , I guess, but, well, things went sour between us. I couldn't get him to let go of his suspicions and the fact that he had them hurt me. It really hurt me. I still didn't know the woman was so deadset on working against me, and so I didn't know quite how to protect myself, protect us, from her. It all came crashing down. He left me for her.

"I didn't put up much of a fight at the end. Maybe I thought I deserved it. That my history came hunting me. I don't know. But once it was over, I vowed never to vow again." Sarah gave her a puzzled look. "I know that sounds incoherent. It probably was...is. But I now don't think of relationships as extending beyond the borders of my bed, or my bedroom, if we aren't...you know...in the bed. Relationships are purely spatial, not emotional." Carina laughed but her heart was not in it. "So, anyway, that's my sad story. Nights like tonight sometimes bring it back. Most of the time I can keep it at bay, but maybe, being here with all of you, provoking all that attention tonight, I don't know...It all came back up for me; I couldn't keep it choked down."

She glanced at Sarah. "But we never speak of this again, and you take my secret with you to the grave, right, Headstone?"

"Right." Sarah hardly knew how to act. No one had told her, the real her, a personal secret since James at the Farm. She hardly knew what to do. She tricked people into trusting her, of course; it was part of the job. But Carina seemed to trust her for real. No covers. Sarah was not sure: was she even trustworthy? She could keep a secret - but what were her motives in keeping her secrets? Weren't they professional or self-protective? Could she keep a secret to protect someone else?

And now she was thinking about her motives. She knew this would happen.

ooOoo

Sarah woke up in the middle of the night. Carina's story was weighing on her. She was not entirely sure why. She felt restless, unsettled. She went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. She was surprised to find Amy sitting there in the dark.

"Hey, Sarah," Amy whispered. "Can't sleep?"

"No, not really. I'd say it's the new bed, but you know how it is, sleeping in a different bed all the time." Sarah stopped and re-played her own words. "That came out wrong."

Amy waved her hand in a small gesture. "No, I know what you meant. Agent Life. Constant movement, the constant flux. Nothing stable. It's hard. It's hard to be hard enough to do the job. But you seem to do it so well." Amy stopped and re-played her own words. "That came out wrong."

"No, it's ok," Sarah got her water and went back to her room. She heard Amy sigh behind her.

* * *

 **A/N2** I have decided to slow the pace of this CATs story. I guess that is probably obvious. I think it will take another three chapters to finish. Tune in next time for Chapter 10, "Girls Will Be Girls (Three): Dream Club".

My story _Cables to Aces_ is about to become a year old. I never imagined writing a story that would find such a large and devoted audience. Views continue apace. Someone PMed me the other day to say she was reading it for the fifth time. For any of you who are reading this and who have read that, my thanks.


	10. Girls Will Be Girls (Three)

**A/N1** More CATs. More Miami mission.

Thanks for reading! How about a comment? A review or a PM.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER TEN

 _Girls Will Be Girls (Three)_ :

 _Dream Club_

* * *

Death by violence  
Destiny decrees  
A permanent reliance  
On the science of extremes

Absent at the wedding  
Present at the birth  
Turning off the lights now all across the earth …

Do you dream in colour?  
Do you dream in colour?  
Do you dream in colour?  
Do you dream at all?  
\- Bill Nelson, _Do You Dream in Colour?_

* * *

The corpse dream. Again.

Sarah rose from her bed as if it were a grave.

 _Headstone._

That is what Carina called her last night. A joke - but also not a joke. Some Freudian twist.

Sarah was too close to death, too close to dying, too close to _making dead_. Too close. A zombie with a gun: not kept undead by eating the brains of others, but by slowly devouring her own heart. When would she take the final bite? When would all hope that she might be reanimated end? She - meaning _her heart_ \- could not last forever. What hope was there for her?

Corpse dream. Again.

She walked the bathroom and splashed water on her face. She leaned forward onto her palms, resting much of her weight on the sink. She was standing like that when Zondra came in. She gave Sarah a look, then held up her running shoes. Sarah nodded.

A few minutes later, Sarah was alive again, sweating. Corpses did not sweat.

Sarah liked Zondra already, liked being with her already. She put no pressure on Sarah. (Sarah returned the favor.) She could just _be_. She did not have to be _anything in particular_. Most importantly, she did not have to be a talker.

Zondra was happy with silence. _Dead air._ Sarah too, though she stayed away from that term.

They did not sprint intermittently as they had the first time. Instead they settled into a slower, distance-consuming pace and began to cover ground. Clouds collected darkly above them. About the time they turned to head back to the condo, the sky opened and it began to spigot rain, to stream water. They both began to laugh as the heavy downpour soaked them; they slowed their pace at the same time without consulting each other.

Sarah could feel the rain on her lips, in her hair, could feel the dampness of the great wide air. Zondra's dark eyes were bright. Festive. They ran in the rain, ran in joy. Without any cause, other than a deep momentary delight at breathing, running, living.

 _Not a corpse. Not just now_.

ooOoo

Zondra had gone to get her shower. Sarah cut up some fruit in a bowl and spooned in some plain yogurt. She made coffee and sat down to eat. She heard a moan and a shuffle behind her. For a split second, her night's dream and her current situation united: she turned, expected to see a corpse. But what she saw were the remains - the mortal but animate remains - of Carina Miller.

Carina scuffed into the kitchen. She had a wine bottle, empty, in one hand and an empty wine glass in the other. She threw the first in the trash and put the second in the dishwasher. Sarah watched her, amused. Carina opened the refrigerator and stood silent, staring into it as if were the newly discovered Ark of the Covenant. The interior light bathed her face in the dark kitchen, dark because the rain was still falling outside. After a moment, Carina spoke but she continued to stare into the refrigerator.

"So, Headstone, all that stuff I said last night...I was, you know, joking. None of that really happened. I was just putting you on, testing your gullibility." She glanced at Sarah finally but out of the corner of her eye.

"What stuff?" Sarah kept her tone light.

Carina shut the refrigerator door and turned slowly to Sarah, giving her an imponderable look. "Right. What stuff? If I had said anything, it would not have been true."

Sarah shrugged a small shrug. "Of course. I know that." She looked back at Carina. Sarah knew Carina was lying now, not lying last night. Carina knew Sarah knew. Carina turned and scuffed back down the hall, another low moan escaping her lips. She put her hands on her head as if she were trying to trap something inside it. Her hands still there, her voice reached Sarah, small, hesitant...ashamed. "Thanks."

ooOoo

The rest of Wednesday passed uneventfully. Amy left the condo to go shopping and managed to drag Carina along, although Carina was still struggling. Amy had sought out Sarah a few times during the morning, and each time asked her about her work for Graham. Sarah tried to be patient and understanding - she could see how another CIA agent might be curious about that - but she could not really tell Amy anything, and Sarah had made that clear in the first mission briefing. Amy, unlike Zondra, put enormous pressure on Sarah, talking incessantly and still wanting Sarah to do the same. After the third time, Amy seemed to finally realize that Sarah was not going to share anything about her Enforcer status with Amy.

All morning, Carina was just as eager to avoid Sarah. She had not even made eye contact with her after the strained conversation in the kitchen. She had chatted a little with Amy, spent some time in her room on the phone with her DEA bosses. She was avoiding Sarah. She was evidently repentant about sharing what she had shared the night before. Sarah was almost sure that avoiding her was the main reason Carina went shopping with Amy.

ooOoo

Zondra had spent her time mostly in her room. At a couple of points, she came out to get food and something to drink. Each time she passed Sarah's room, Sarah was on the phone with Graham, reporting on the Story Club foray last night or discussing details of the Dream Club foray coming Saturday night. VIP passes had been arranged. Everything seemed ready, as long as Carina's informant was as good as his word.

When Sarah hung up after the second call and stood looking out the window, Zondra appeared behind her in the door to Sarah's room. In a jesting tone: "You two talk like father and daughter - a weird father and a weird daughter - but that's what it sounds like: a strong-minded teenager talking to her overbearing, overweening father." Zondra did not stay for a response.

The comment made Sarah's legs weak. _Is that true?_ Sarah sat down on the bed.

 _Graham as my father? Do I think of him that way?_ Sarah had no more than formulated the question than she knew the answer was _yes_.

 _Why did I do that, adopt him as my father?_ Again, she knew the answer as soon as she formulated the question. _Because he adopted me as his daughter. From the beginning. Graham saved Dad by getting Dad out of the way: so that Graham could step in. Graham as father figure. Of course, Sarah had no love for Graham - he was not her father in that way, but he had functionally become her father, occupied a vacant role._

She pushed the thought away from her. She did not want to think about Graham. But she could feel the thought rattling around inside her as she sought to forget it.

ooOoo

Wednesday night they took a limo to Naoe, a five-star Japanese restaurant not that far from the condo. But the goal, again, was to be seen, and to be seen doing particular things. The limo guaranteed an audience. The dresses and heels the women wore guaranteed that the audience was unlikely to lose interest. The meal was phenomenal: fish as good as any Sarah could remember, with a soy sauce that was unreal, delicious - a specialty of the house.

Amy sat beside her, and Sarah, despite it being hard for her to do so, took control of the conversation, steering it away from herself, from Enforcer topics. She asked Amy about how she had joined the CIA.

Amy smiled, her eyes going out-of-focus as she remembered. "Well...I was studying Hotel and Restaurant Management at school. Majoring in Hospitality - that was the joke, anyway.

"One day they had a career fair and I was walking around the tables. There was this one table...I couldn't see the sign, but I could see the guy sitting there. He. Was. Gorgeous. A little older, but, well, scrumptious. I started talking to him. It was the CIA table. I mean, it didn't say 'CIA' but that's why he was there recruiting. He identified himself as screening candidates who might be interested in federal law enforcement. I was interested in _him_. He took me to dinner when the fair ended, and then to his hotel later. After, you know, he opened up to me, told me what he really did. I was curious about him; so, curious about what he did. I was studying Hospitality because I wanted to travel; I was hoping to get a job at a luxury hotel overseas. And then I thought: _Cool, I can see the world and do something significant too._ "

Sarah had to steel her features when Amy said 'significant'. Sarah had thought of Christiana, of Leipzig.

Amy was waiting for a reaction from Sarah. Sarah forced her mind back to the present, to Miami. "Huh. So, you joined up. A long way from Hospitality, I guess?"

Sarah intended the question to be rhetorical, but Amy studied after it: "No, not really. Not if what you get stuck doing is constant seduction missions. Behind my back, some of the other agents at Langley call me Miss Hospitality." Amy's look was so painfully earnest that Sarah stifled her burgeoning grin. "I can be a _real agent_ , Sarah, guns not gowns. Maybe not like you, exactly, I don't know about _that,_ but like...Zondra." Amy eyed Zondra, who was looking the other way, listening to Carina. "But everyone looks at me and sees a damn cheerleader, not a spy. I've been... _typecast_. It's so annoying."

Sarah did her best to placate Amy, but she was not sure how effective she had been. Especially since Sarah represented what Amy wanted, or thought she did, even while Sarah tried to make Amy feel better about not having it. She felt like the conversation ended with Amy still frustrated.

But then Sarah got drawn into Carina's conversation with Zondra. Amy seemed to have shifted focus to it too, and so the Miss Hospitality discussion ended.

ooOoo

Thursday and Friday passed much the same way, except for a brief appearance at a small club on Thursday night. They did not stay long, only long enough to again make sure that their presence was recognized. Friday night was dinner at another expensive restaurant.

By Friday, they had all begun to get used to each other. Sarah and Zondra ran both Thursday morning and Friday morning. Carina was still distant with Sarah, but was no longer actively avoiding her. The truth was that Sarah was feeling awkward around Carina, like she had taken something from Carina that Carina had not intended to give away, and Sarah was unsure how to respond to trust offered and then revoked. Amy seemed to have settled, in and down, and had become irrepressibly cheery.

ooOoo

"My informant's name is George," Carina began and Zondra snorted. "No, really, George Cruz. He's a sad case. Once married, a successful businessman, he let himself try something at an office party and got hooked. Couldn't get unhooked. But his wife could, his career could." She ended the sentence and the words hung in the air for a moment.

"He's been supporting himself and his habit by dealing. He's not on the street but he's not any mover or shaker. _Mid-level management_ , you might call him. Gets the good stuff, mostly deals to folks who drive fancy cars. He's not making handouts to junkies on the street."

Carina took a moment before she went on. She handed out copies of a photo. "He's doing a bad thing, yes; he's really not a bad guy. Anyway, he's at the good spot in the game for the new group to target him. Low enough that he doesn't rate protection or supervision, high enough that he can get their product into monied hands. I suspect they'll make contact with a lot of his type in the next few days, or that's their plan.

"Remember, he's taking a chance for me tonight. Admittedly, his motives aren't exactly pure. He's hoping this gets him a ticket to The Carina Miller Experience." She paused for a moment and shimmied as she hummed the chorus of Hendrix's _Are You Experienced?_ \- but then she was immediately serious again. "It won't, of course, but if it goes well, I may be able to use him helping _us_ to get _him_ some help, get law enforcement to stop attending him and let the medical profession to tend to him...Who knows? He might be able to get clean."

Carina sounded hopeful and resigned at the same time. She looked at Sarah, Zondra, and Amy in turn. Each nodded to her. Satisfied, she went on. "He will be at the VIP section of Dream tonight. Contact is to be made there. I have posed as his girl before. Tonight, I have my college buddies with me. That's you three, in case you missed that.

"It's going to be crucial that one of you keeps the contact around, gets him talking, maybe gets him drunk. I don't know how disciplined these guys are on the job. Maybe a lot, hopefully not much. As soon as we can, we need to get him out of there and take him someplace where we can question him. It would work best if we could avoid drugging him. Better for him to remember at least getting himself drunk; that way, the blackout to come won't seem suspicious. We need to do it fast enough no one misses him before we have a name or a location."

The plan seemed simple enough. But the trick was always the execution of the plan in context. Sarah knew that plans were formulated always in the frictionless realm of theory. Practice almost always had other ideas.

They dressed to kill once again, this time more seriously. Weapons were hidden as well as club attire would allow. They had earwigs in their purses. They could use them if necessary, if, for some reason, one of them got separated from the others. They also had trackers hidden in various pieces of jewelry. Sarah insisted that they be fully prepared. When she was satisfied that they were, they climbed into the limo and headed to Dream Club.

ooOoo

As the limo pulled up, Sarah saw a small, nervous-looking man in a stylish suit checking a clipboard in his hands. The limo driver got out and opened the door, and Sarah led everyone out onto the sidewalk. The man rushed to her. "I have VIP reservations here for four women who are to be arriving in...well, in this limo, that is, a limo with this license plate number. Are you the four women?"

Sarah was amused by his oddly clipped, rushed delivery. "Well, I guess. We are four women in a limo with the right plates. Probably not a lot of us running about in Miami tonight." Sarah smiled at him.

He brightened. "Yes, true." He stood up straighter but was still several inches shorter than Sarah. He was shorter than each of the four women. "I am Antonio. I am your VIP concierge. I will make sure you get to our special, private VIP area, that you are served promptly, whatever you wish, and that the evening is all that you hoped when you booked the Dream VIP package."

Sarah had expected all this. Graham told her about the arrangements. Out of the car, Sarah could not only hear the thump, thump of the hip-hop but feel it too. It was going to be loud inside. Antonio was standing looking up (and down) all four of them, his expression a bit wobbly. He saw Sarah notice his look and he forced his eyes to his clipboard. "Well, ladies, come with me. Your Dream awaits." He had intended the last as a verbal flourish, but his voice broke and he ended up coughing a bit through 'awaits'. Sarah and the others followed him inside.

She had been right about the music. Inside, it was the music was not just deafening, it was physically punishing. The beat doled out a beating. Antonio led them through a crowded room, supersaturated with people dancing, and then into a smaller room, nicer and more expensively appointed. The VIP area.

As they came in, Carina quickened her step, passing by the other women and even getting a step past Antonio. "George, sweetie!" she cried, her voice just audible above the music. George rose from a leather armchair. He was a cream-colored suit over a black t-shirt. If he had been less thin, and perhaps less twitchy, he might have been a handsome man. But Sarah, knowing some of his story, could see the toll his addiction had taken on him, how it had reduced and unnerved him. But his smile at seeing Carina was generous and warm. It struck Sarah forcibly that George did not just want to sleep with Carina. He had feelings for her. If Carina knew that, she had been careful not to let on. But then Sarah realized - Carina did not know or would not let herself know that George had feelings for her. _What did she say about relationships? Spatial, not emotional._

Carina closed the gap between herself and George almost immediately. He folded her into his arms and she gave him a quick peck on the cheek before twisting so that she could face Antonio, Sarah, Zondra and Amy. "Girls! Here he is. _George_." She was almost yelling to be heard. In the earlier room, she would not have been audible.

She twisted back to face George. "And these are my girls. Sarah, Zondra, and Amy." George smiled, nodding at them, but it was clear that he would rather be looking at Carina. After a moment, after they had acknowledged him, that is exactly what he did.

Antonio flipped a couple of pages on his clipboard and asked the women what they would like to drink. All this had been happening with people dancing and music playing. Although Sarah had been wholly focused on George once she saw him, she knew that there were lots of people around him. She also knew that their entrance had drawn a lot of attention. The dreary line of men ready to give Sarah a line was about to form. She had been dreading that more than any other part of the evening. It was time for the Ice Queen to reign.

Antonio left to get them drinks. The music seemed to increase in volume. Sarah felt a hand on her arm, spun and found Amy grinning at her. "Let's dance!" Sarah allowed Amy to drag her onto the crowded floor. She began to dance beside Amy. A moment later, Carina and George joined them. Carina danced close to Sarah and leaned to her. "Contact's not here yet. But George expects him soon!" Sarah nodded her understanding and went on dancing. Zondra seemed to have been swallowed by the crowd. Sarah could not find her.

After a few songs, the press of the crowd and the loudness of the music drove them back to their seats. Drinks had arrived - Antonio was standing nearby, watching over them. Zondra was already seated, nursing a drink. Her hair was damp on her forehead. She had evidently been dancing too. They had all just taken their seats, George included, when a group of men walked up. One of them, the leader, evidently, walked to Sarah. "Hello!" He said it loudly, above the music.

"Hi!" Sarah said, wishing the man gone. He was handsome and was obviously more aware of it than anyone else in the club could be.

"Would you like to dance? I was watching you, you are a great dancer!"

 _Oh, god, open with creepy._ "No, no thanks. Maybe later. I will find you." _Not a chance in hell, but whatever it takes to get you and your boys out of our way._ He smiled at her, teeth dentist-white. He seemed sure that she would. He and his entourage headed back onto the dance floor. Sarah noticed that Carina was looking at her, had evidently watched the whole exchange. Zondra was listening while Amy tried to shout small talk at George. More men began to circle their part of the VIP area. But it seemed likely that the failure of the handsome man who approached Sarah to get her onto the floor had made the new men cautious. If that guy did not succeed, it was unclear who would.

Sarah thought of her dad. _A good con controls her space, Darlin', she knows what signals she's sending out. She makes sure her energy is right. People are in communication before they ever speak. Posture, expression, intensity, the trail of the eyes. Everything is a tell for someone who knows how to read. And never forget, we all, including non-cons, we all read each other. It is what humans do. You and I, Darlin', are just better at it than others. So, remember, you are reading but others are reading you._ Sarah almost smiled at that - although she did not. It was a lesson her seduction instructor had reinforced. It had proven crucial to her becoming the Ice Queen.

She had found that she was good at being unreadable, a closed and locked book. And even if the people around her were not able to put it into words, her being simply unreadable was more off-putting than her being readably unwelcoming or hostile. It was a little like that strange novel, _Perfume,_ she had read during downtime on a mission. (The novel had been left in a stack in the hotel lobby, and Sarah had done all the mission prep she could do.) The central character, Jean-Baptiste, had an insanely sensitive sense of smell. But he had no odor of his own. People hated him because of it. Not because he stank, but because he had no odor. It creeped everyone out, even though they did not know what was causing their reaction. She had found parts of her life and Jean-Baptiste's distressingly similar.

At the Farm, James had once observed to her that she could petrify her features and that when she did, it was like she went from colorized to black-and-white. She stonified her features there at the table. Maybe the men would be content just to circle. _What James never knew was that the shift from color to black-and-white was internal too. My inner world goes black-and-white. The inner life of a zombie with a gun._

Sarah had been staring at her drink, thinking. But she noticed that Carina and George had stood up. She refocused ( _Damn. Get your head in the game, Enforcer!_ ). A man had come to the table, come to George. The man looked around the table, his eyes lingering for a moment on Amy, who was looking at him. His gaze lingered a beat. She smiled her cutest smile. He noticed but turned back to George.

The man had on an expensive brown leather jacket over a white, button-up dress shirt. Dark pants. Italian shoes, also expensive. He wore a Rolex. There was something about the combination of his clothes and his manner, wary yet self-assured, that made Sarah sure this was their man, the contact. He pulled George aside and began to talk to him intently. Amy stood up, threw back the remains of her drink (she made sure the man noticed, despite his attention being mostly focused on George). She made a show of adjusting her mini-dress, but after adjustment, it seemed shorter, not longer. She sashayed around the table and approached the man. _Seduction success, Graham said. I see why. She's good._ The man reoriented himself slightly as Amy approached. She stopped just out of arm's reach, waiting. The man said a few more words to George, then he turned his full attention on Amy. They exchanged a few sentences, and then Amy had him by the hand, dragging him (he was going willingly, if too slowly for Amy's pace) to the dance floor. George shot Carina a look and a wink.

Contact had been made. This was the man they were looking for. Amy had him wholly focused on her. Her skirt seemed to have shortened even more on the dance floor, and Amy had found a way to brush almost all of herself against the man in the first few bars of the song. It struck Sarah as too forward, too fast - but Amy seemed to be sure of herself, and judging from the darkening, glazed look on the man's face, she seemed to be right. She already had her mark on the hook.

Carina slid into a chair next to Sarah. Sarah reoriented her chair away from the dance floor. Carina leaned in and so did Sarah. "George says that the guy - no name, yet - wants to talk. Outside. But if he gets outside, we probably lose him. Thoughts?" Carina was staring past Sarah's shoulder, presumably to Amy and the man. "Damn, that girl looks like an angel, but she can dance like a devil. Much more out there, and _I_ will blush." Whether it was for the sake of the mission or for another reason, Carina seemed finally willing to interact with Sarah.

Sarah did not turn around. Instead, she looked down and pondered the situation. After a moment, she looked up. "Do you think he's already into her enough that we can presume he's planning to sleep with her?"

Carina stared past Sarah's shoulder again. "Um, yeah. He's going to try right there on the dance floor if Amy manages to raise her skirt another millimeter. She's good. I heard she was. That misbehaving angel thing she's got going...well, she's good."

Sarah nodded. "So, this conversation outside. Is it supposed to happen soon?"

Carina continued to watch the dance floor. She shrugged. "Don't know. But my guess is that he'll be dancing with Amy for a while. Well, I guess that's not dancing, really. It's _foreplay_ to music." Carina shook her head.

A few moments later, Amy led the man back. They were both panting. Amy looked at Sarah and shot her a private wink. Antonio brought another round of drinks. The man introduced himself as Ricky. Ricky looked at George and mouthed "Later." Then he began to talk to Amy.

The next couple of hours were spent much like that. Drinking (Sarah was careful never to finish a drink before the next one came, as were the others), dancing, and watching Ricky's increasing absorption in Amy. At one point, Carina moved next to Amy and whispered to her. They both looked at Ricky and giggled. The giggles were for show.

Finally, Amy came to Sarah. "C'mon, go to the bathroom with me?" Sarah got up and followed.

Against all odds, the bathroom was empty when they entered. Amy turned to Sarah and in the most business-like tone Sarah had heard from her, she explained. "Ricky wants to take me home. If I go, that puts less pressure on the conversation with George, less pressure on George. I'm sure Ricky will talk to him still, but I can be there, outside, when it happens. And then I can find out more about Ricky."

Sarah shook her head. "We didn't plan for this, Amy. We don't have adequate backup. We have no idea where he will take you. We have no idea what he will want from you, exactly. No, it's a bad idea. We'll stay with the original plan. Has he been drinking."

Amy, her face disappointed, shook her head. "A little, but not enough. Look, Sarah, we came with earwigs, trackers. You made sure we did. I have a tranquilizer. You will know where I am. He's not likely to take me out of range of the tracker." She smiled cockily. "He can't wait much longer; he won't take me far. So, the bases are covered. The tranq's my exit strategy. Let me do this. Let's do this." The look of pained hope on Amy's face mirrored her pained look when she told Sarah about Miss Hospitality.

 _This is why I work alone. Other people are unpredictable. They make you feel things for them that affect your judgment. They want things for reasons that are not wholly mission-related. I need to work alone. A team is a bad idea._

"Okay," Sarah offered at last. She could not say _no_. If Amy wanted to run the risk, it was her choice. She did have the earwig, the tranq, the tracker. "But you need to be careful. You are out on a limb here and it can easily be sawn off. Go lightly."

Amy nodded tightly and headed back into the club. Sarah sighed behind her and then followed.

ooOoo

Amy made it clear to Ricky that the answer was _yes_. At that point, Ricky was ready to leave. He motioned to George to come with him, and he got up, taking Amy's hand, and the three of them headed out of the club. Sarah dropped her head at Zondra, and, after a few seconds, Zondra got up to follow them. Sarah angled in her chair and pulled the small electronic device used to follow trackers out of her handbag. It looked like a cell phone. She punched in the code for Amy's tracker. Immediately, a flashing green dot appeared on the screen, moving slowly. Sarah blew out a breath. She had checked the equipment at the condo, but devices had a way of going wrong. Luckily, no such problem. Everything was working.

They dot stopped. Presumably, Ricky was now talking to George. After a few minutes, the dot began to move again. Sarah adjusted the device so that it displayed a larger area, not just the club and its immediate environs. Zondra came back to the table. George was with her. Sarah looked up from the device. "I need to get into a cab and trail them. Zondra, you come with me. Carina, debrief George. We'll all meet back at the condo." Sarah looked at George and for Carina's sake, added: "Thanks, and good luck." She got up and Zondra joined her. They waved to Antonio. He waved back and made a notation on his clipboard.

Outside, they found a cab. Sarah dropped a fifty over the seat. "I'll be giving you directions. Just take us where i say." The cabbie, a grizzled man in his sixties, took one look at Sarah's face and began to drive.

They followed Amy's green dot. Amy had been right. Ricky did not take her far. It took Sarah and Zondra a few minutes to get to where Amy's signal had stopped moving. It was at one of the nicest hotels in town. Sarah and Zondra got out of the cab. Across the street was a pastry shop, its windows full of wares. Its sign said 'Open 24/7'. Sarah pointed it out with a toss of her head and they crossed the street. Once inside, Sarah sent Zondra to buy them coffee, and Sarah sat down near the window and dug her earwig out of her bag. Without a support truck to amplify the signal, the earwigs were not strong enough to cover much distance. Sarah heard only static. As she looked out the window of the shop, she shifted focus. The few people in the shop were glancing from Sarah to Zondra. She realized that their club attire seemed completely out of place in the shop. Self-consciously, Sarah adjusted herself on the stool, trying to lengthen her skirt.

Zondra came back with coffee and a danish. She slid a coffee to Sarah, then cut the danish in two. She positioned its plate between them. Wordlessly, they ate the danish, staring at the flashing but unmoving dot.

They sat there for two - then for three - hours. The green dot flashed but did not move. Sarah was checking the device, worrying about the battery running low, when she heard Zondra gasp. Amy was walking out of the hotel, unsteadily. Her dress was crooked. Her hair was wild. Even at this distance, Sarah could see that one of her eyes was red and swollen. It looked like her lip was bleeding. Sarah grabbed her bag and stuffed the tracker in it as they ran across the street. Amy saw them and looked around, a bit wildly. But when she looked back at them, the wildness was gone. She just looked blonde and small and hurt.

"He tried to force me. I couldn't get to the tranq. I fought him off, but he got away. I don't know where he went. He didn't tell me anything useful. There was nothing in the room."

"It's okay, Amy," Sarah said softly as she looked more closely at Amy's face. She would have a huge black eye. Her lip was split, but otherwise, she seemed okay. Shaky, but okay. Zondra flagged down a taxi waiting near the hotel entrance. They headed for the condo.

Sarah was deeply relieved that Amy was okay, but as they rode, it occurred to her that unless George had gotten useful intel out of Ricky or they could find something on the hotel computers (she would call Graham when they arrived), the mission had been a failure.

 _God, I hate to fail. What good is there being in this life unless I succeed at it?_

Amy leaned her head on Sarah's shoulder.

Sarah patted Amy's leg and stared out the window at dark Miami, out at her black-and-white world.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tricky chapter to write, lots of things going as a backdrop to complicated interpersonal dynamics, all while setting up things in the middle distance and in the far distance.

Tune in next time for Chapter 11, "Girls Will be Girls (Four): Snake's Blood". Graham calls his Enforcer away from Miami for a mission - and more.

How about a review, particularly if you haven't written one? Love to know you are out there.

By the way, the running scene borrows from and pays homage to the Charles Hamilton Sorley poem, _Song of the Ungirt Runners_ , a favorite of mine. Hadn't thought about that Bill Nelson song for years but it came to mind as I started the chapter.

Story and Dream are current Miami nightclubs. I doubt either existed when these events would have happened. But the names were too good to pass up. Naoe probably did not exist either.

Z


	11. Girls Will Be Girls (Four)

**A/N1** I said some of this would be experimental. There's been a little of that so far. Psychologist reports, emails, etc. Now there's more of it.

This chapter shifts into Sarah's voice, first-personally. I have tried to capture her studied attempts to 'depersonalize' her own inner life, and the limited success she has at doing that.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 _Girls Will Be Girls (Part Four)_

 _Snake's Blood_

* * *

And I'm taking up serpents again  
And I'm speaking in tongues unknown to men  
I thought the cracks through that heart were finally on the mend  
But I'm taking up serpents again  
\- Curtis Eller's American Circus, _Taking Up Serpents Again_

* * *

I was silent on the cab ride home. Amy was leaning on me. I didn't know what to do for her. Her pain was too real. Too close to pain of my own. Different cause, maybe; but the same job. Compromises. I had never had to fight my way out of the dark intent of a mark's embrace, and maybe Amy had pushed too fast, too hard, trying to impress me - me and Carina and Zondra. Maybe she let things go too far on the dance floor, said her pretended _yes_ too emphatically. Seductions done right require never letting the mark be sure, sure of you. But this was not her fault. It was the job's fault. Ricky's fault.

I called Graham. He was unhappy with the results of the evening. He did not blame me - but I did. He dispatched a team to the hotel, to check their records and their videotape, and to check the room again. Maybe something about Ricky could be gleaned that way. I was doubtful, but that was the right call. Graham told me to tell Carina to get back to work with her Miami DEA contacts, to see if we could find another strategy for finding out about this group. If Ricky was representative, then they were bad news. Careful, smart, brutal. Before I could suggest anything more, Graham told me that he had a mission for me.

Malaysia. A CIA agent, an important one, had been taken in Malaysia, somewhere outside Penang. He was being held hostage by a gangster who enjoyed governmental protections, and so diplomatic solutions were off the table. A murky situation and very dangerous. The agent was being held in a mountain estate, limited ingress, limited egress. A bottleneck crammed with heavily armed guards. A small private army.

I was to go and get him out. It was crucial that it be done secretly. I had to get him in and out without creating any kind of incident. Quick, quiet, no mess.

At least it was not the sort of mission I expected when he started telling me about it. As he briefed me, it became clear that it was a mission that would work best with two agents, not just one. I had undertaken missions like that before and survived them, but I had just gotten to Miami, just become part of a team. The team made me uncomfortable, but I did not want to leave and then come back and start over.

I asked him if another agent from the team could be partnered with me for the mission. Carina had work to do in Miami to find another lead. Amy needed time to recover. So...

"I'd like to have Zondra go with me, if possible."

Graham was silent. He had not expected that request. We were nearly even; I had not expected to make it. But I had worked alone for so long - since Leipzig. And although it felt strange, and although I would not have admitted it aloud, certainly not to Graham, I trusted Zondra.

I filled the silence. "It's really a two-agent op, sir. One to go inside and make the extraction, another to oversee the extraction from the outside, to make sure...that I can get the agent from the scene."

I wasn't sure what Graham was thinking. He remained silent. Finally, just as I was about to provide more detail, to justify the request, he answered, relented (at least that was how it felt, how his tone sounded). "Ok, Agent Walker. But she needs to know that you are going in without any kind of diplomatic protection. If the mission goes wrong, becomes an incident, the two of you will rot with the agent. The US will deny all knowledge, all involvement. The story will be that the op was rogue. Is that clear to you, and will you make it clear to Agent Rizzo?"

"Yes, clear; I will explain it to her. I will talk to her, then call you back. Is transportation arranged?"

"Yes, you will fly commercial to Montgomery, Alabama - then be taken to Maxwell AFB. You will hitchhike on a transport that will get you from there to Malaysia. I will wait to tell you more until you have talked to Agent Rizzo. That way, I won't have to repeat myself. Flight to Montgomery leaves in four hours, Agent." Graham ended the call. I left my room. Zondra was in hers.

"I was on the phone with Graham. He has a mission for me. Malaysia." I told her about the mission and then told her that I had asked Graham if she could be my partner. I made sure she understood how exposed we would be, how dangerous the mission was.

She smiled at me and shrugged. "Understood." She smiled even more. "Really? I'm going to be partnered with Graham's Enforcer?"

I didn't answer the question in that form. Not exactly. "Is that a _yes_?" Zondra nodded. She grabbed her suitcase and started to put things in it. I went back to my room. I felt strangely elated. _Strangely_ : because I was facing a mission that could well be my last, and because I was going to do it with a partner. Neither of those things should have left me any emotional space for elation. Dread made more sense. I could die. I worked alone.

The first was not good news, of course, but it was old news. I had been reconciling myself to my fate since Graham installed me as his Enforcer. I would die on the job. A knife, a bullet, an explosion...torture. No one but Graham would be sure what happened to me, if even he was. But I had never been anybody in particular. There was a dark appropriateness in the thought that my grave would be unmarked. My life was too. Unmarked. Unnamed. I would become the corpse I kept dreaming myself to be. But I did not want to die. Not on the job. Not at all. I had never lived. Not as somebody. Not as me. There were so many things I hoped.. _.No_. No, No margin in letting myself start _that_ list.

So, why elated?

Because I was _not_ working alone. The thought of a partner panicked me. I was not sure I could do it. But it cheered me too. I realized I wanted to try. I had been alone for so long, really since the Farm, since James got in that taxi. The last few days were the first time I have felt any kind of connection to anyone since Sebastian and Christiana, and that was _false,_ unreal, an attachment from within a cover. They never knew me. But with Zondra...Maybe I already have a friend. (Maybe with Carina too, although I can't tell if she will ever get over sharing that secret with me.) I doubt Graham will let me have a partner for long - I know he has already said the team is temporary. But maybe I can make friends that can outlive the partnership or the team.

I called Graham and told him the news. He told me he would brief us during our layover at Maxwell. It would be long enough for him to do it. They would have a room set aside in one of the hangers where we could have a conference call. He promised to make the necessary changes to the mission specs so that Zondra was accommodated - weapons, gear, tactical items. He ended the call. I grabbed my suitcase. It was already packed. It was never really unpacked. I could not remember the last time it had been empty for more than a few minutes. It had the necessities in it at all times. But never anything of mine, really, nothing personal. I had nothing personal to put in it, not even a picture or a piece of jewelry. I traveled light more by necessity than by design. I had nothing to carry of any real weight, certainly nothing of emotional weight. I had nothing with sentimental value. Nothing with a meaning beyond its utilitarian purpose. The closest was my Porsche. But it was in DC, in storage, as it mostly was, since I was rarely there to drive it.

I called a taxi. Then, I pulled my suitcase into the living area. Amy was sitting on the couch, an ice pack against her eye. The eye was turning purple. Her lip was swollen. She looked like she wanted to cry, but she had not been crying. Carina was sitting beside her. They both looked at me, Amy with her one good eye.

"Leaving so soon? One bad night and you're done with us?" Carina's banter had an edge to it.

"No, but Graham has a mission for me. A couple of days. Zondra's coming with me." Both women did a brief double-take.

Amy got her question out before Carina. "I thought the Enforcer worked alone." Carina glanced at Amy - they had the same question - and then she looked at me.

"This is a two-agent op. I might have been able to do it alone, but it would have been far more dangerous. Carina, you have work to do, DEA work, to get us another lead. Amy, you need time to recover from tonight."

"No, no, I don't." Amy's voice rose.

Carina put her hand on Amy's arm. "Yes, Amy, you do. And Sarah is right. I have work to do here. Zondra makes sense. You and I will need to keep the cover going while they are gone. What happened tonight ought not to endanger the cover. But if we ever find that bastard, Ricky, I will separate him from his potential to father children…"

Amy looked at Carina and then at me. Finally, she looked at the floor, nodding.

Zondra came up the hallway. I gave her a look and she followed me outside. The taxi was already there, waiting for us. My strange elation was still tagging along. I knew it was crazy, but I felt like a teenager who'd convinced her folks to let her friend come with them on vacation.

But this was no vacation.

And Graham was not my father.

ooOoo

I spun the wheel of the jeep, fighting the mud and the rain. The only way to get to the mountain estate, other than by air, was by this one road. And a long, drawn-out rain, days long, evidently, had rendered what was normally an easily passable road a brown, spongy challenge. Heavy vegetation and trees lined the side of the road. The rain was a pain now. It would be an advantage later.

We drove. The only sound was the engine and the rain. We hadn't spent much time talking on the plane. We'd gone over the plan we formulated with Graham, utilizing the suggestions of the analyst who had 'gamed' the op. (The analyst had recommended that it be a two-agent op. Graham let that slip. He had known from the beginning but would have sent me in alone.) But once Zondra and I were in agreement, at least in theory, about how to get the agent out, we had fallen into a companionable silence. I had not felt so much at ease around another person since Gale. One part of me kept whispering obsessively that this was a bad idea: an increase in complications, an extension of vulnerability. I was going to rely on someone else. Someone I liked. Someone I could not simply abandon to her fate if that was what the mission required. Still, I liked not being alone.

We stopped the jeep about two miles from the estate. Graham had supplied us with a set of radio-controlled mines. I got out of the jeep and grabbed the short, military shovel in the back. Zondra had gotten out too, and grabbed the box of mines. She put it on the ground carefully and began to unwrap the first one. I dug a hole. The rain made the work easy but messy. We planted three mines in a line across the road. Although I had not used the ordnance before, I knew something about them. (I knew something about almost any weapon or explosive. I made myself know.) They packed a serious bang. Together, the three of them would open a crater in the road. There ought to be enough interference to allow us to get away, if we could make it this far.

By the time we were done, darkness had crept in. The rain had not given way to it, however. It continued to fall. I ran my hands through the mud on the shovel blade and then smeared it on my face, down my arms.

Zondra gave me a shocked look. "Just blending in." She shook her head. We grinned at each other. We got back in the jeep and drove as close as we could. The rain was again on our side. It was loud and it was a sonic blanket, muffling noises. Sounds would not carry in it. I turned off the engine. Zondra sent the signal. Our escape ride was not really the jeep. It would take us part of the way. There was a knoll, reasonably clear, just past where we had buried the mines. A copter would pick us up there, get us away.

"Ok, I'm going in, Zondra. I will contact you once when I have him, and once when we clear the mansion. If he's mobile, I will try to come to you. If he's not, you'll have to come to us."

"Right. Let's hope he's mobile. And, hey, Sarah, just call me 'Z'. Partners, right?" She seemed as strangely elated about this as I did.

"Ok, Z. Let's bust this guy out."

She laughed. "The usual, huh? Helpless man depending on a woman to save him." I grinned at her, feeling the mud on my face. I hoped she couldn't tell that where men and women were concerned, I had little idea what was usual - although I appreciated the joke, the lightening of the mood.

I slipped on a vest and then the small pack I would carry on my back. I had knives and an S&W and an extra pistol. I had flashbangs. I had a couple of explosives. I had tools. I adjusted the cap on my head.

Zondra walked part of the way with me, to a high point near the road from which she could see the compound. She set up her rifle (with a night-vision scope) there. She would be able to watch the compound for me and provide cover, if necessary. The hope was to do this without that being necessary.

As I trudged on alone in the mud, I visualized the layout of the estate. Graham had sent a satellite photo to Maxwell. The place must have cost a fortune to build: getting workers out to the remote site, getting building supplies and there. It was really a small village. Several buildings. One main house. A nearby set of solar panels provided power. A nearby stream provided water. It was rustic, but not primitive. A safe retreat for a man with powerful enemies.

Graham had been vague about the agent, about his capture, about who he was or why he mattered. I was used to that. I was Graham's weapon but I never knew more than he deemed absolutely necessary about missions. I actually wanted it that way. I did not want to think about anything except what was necessary for the mission. I kept myself ignorant, as much as I could, of Graham's agenda. _Who, what, when, where?_ \- all in the barest possible terms. And never, ever _Why?_

As I got closer, my mind focused entirely on my surroundings and on the mission. This was why I wanted to work. Work occupied my head. Kept it from wandering, wondering. Work allowed me to sequester my heart. To not feel what I felt.

There was no fence or gate to contend with. But the estate was lit up, at least around the main building, a long, low affair. My first order of business was to prepare to leave. I worked slowly, the final twenty yards or so on my belly, slithering in the mud. I got to the small hut where the batteries that stored power from the solar panels were kept. Luckily, the hut was beyond the illuminated area around the main building. I found the power line running to the hut and I quickly attached an explosive to it, then grabbed handfuls of muddy grass and obscured the device. I did the same on the line running from the hut toward the main house. I had the trigger for the explosives in my pocket. If all went well, I could now turn off the lights.

That left me with my next task. Getting into the main house. Graham's analyst was reasonably sure ( _reasonably sure!_ ) that one end of the house was used as living quarters, the other was devoted to operations, running the 'business'. The analyst thought that was likely where the agent was being held. I needed to get to the main building and inside it, but that was going to require that I be in the light for at least a few seconds. I had to risk it. I felt calm, as I almost always did on missions. Perhaps the truest testimony to how screwed up I was, my life was - the truest testimony was that this, prone in the mud, about to run into the light and perhaps to be shot, this felt _normal_. Everything else, everything non-mission, everything else felt non-normal.

I made myself stop thinking and I ran into the light. No one saw me. _Lucky_. Carina would find that funny.

The door I reached was at an angle from the lights around the main house, and so it was overshadowed. I was probably safe there for a few seconds. The door, surprisingly, was unlocked; the knob turned. I held the knob in place and pushed the door open. I sighed in relief: no lights. I slipped inside.

I stood blinking for a moment, otherwise unmoving, letting my eyes adjust. I was in a storage room. Crates of weapons. Boxes of canned goods. Rolls of toilet paper. There was a door opposite me, and I could see light beneath it. There was also a door to my right. No light under it. I moved to the door on my right. Instinct. As I got closer, I could see a padlock on the door. I unslung my bag and got my lockpicking tools out. A few seconds later, the padlock was unlocked. I pulled it out of place and opened the door. Inside, just barely visible in the dim light from outside, was a man. He was gagged and tied to a chair. He matched the description Graham gave me. The agent.

I grabbed a knife and quickly cut his bonds. He had been beaten, but nothing seemed broken. He woke as I worked. He jerked.

"Quiet," I whispered. "We are here to get you out." He smiled in relief and I could see that he had lost a tooth or two. He looked a bit like a jack-o-lantern. "Can you walk?" He nodded, tentatively. I helped him stand. Yes: he could walk. I reached into my bag and retrieved the extra pistol. I handed it to him and he cocked it, practiced and sure, despite a grimace. I could see that his hands were battered. But he made no sound. He nodded at me and I led us out to the door.

"We will be exposed when we step out. I can cut the lights, but I don't want to do it unless I have to. I want to get out clean, if possible." He understood.

I contacted Zondra. "Got him, Z. About to come out. Clear?"

"Clear." I felt relieved, not just that we were clear, but that she was okay.

"Move quickly but don't try to run. It's raining. They won't hear us. Let's hope they don't see us."

We stepped out the door and began to move quickly through the light. I led him along the reverse path I had taken. We were on the edge of the light when I heard a cry.

 _Shit._

We then began to run. Shots were fired. Misses. I fished the detonator out of my pocket. Once we had gotten well past the battery hut, I clicked it. There was a moment of bright light caused by the twin explosions, then everything plunged into darkness and chaos. More shots. More misses. We were out of the estate grounds at this point, moving along the road. Zondra should have moved to the jeep at this point and should be ready to go. I could hear the yells behind us, but at a distance. More shots. Misses. No. I heard the agent gasp. I spun. He had his hand on his shoulder.

"Go, I'm ok."

I turned and led us deeper into the darkness. I knew that the bad guys had a jeep and a truck. They knew we had to use the road. They'd be after us soon. Very soon.

Ahead I saw the jeep, then heard it. Zondra was at the wheel. I jumped in the front seat beside her, and the agent got in the back. She flipped on the lights and lurched into motion. I turned to look back. I saw headlights turn our direction. They were coming. But we had a sizeable lead. Zondra drove the jeep expertly, getting as much speed out of it as she could. The headlights behind us were still at a distance. They had not gained.

After a few minutes, we passed the spot where we buried the mines. Zondra had that detonator and she clicked it. There was a bright explosion, and heavy thump, thump, thump; dirt sprayed onto the jeep along with the rain.

We had almost reached the extraction point, but we were going to have to do the last of the distance, up to the top of the knoll, on foot. I turned to the agent. He was unconscious. I got out and pulled him toward me, getting him up on my shoulder in a fireman's carry. Zondra shot me a look.

"I can carry him. Let's go." We plunged into the vegetation.

I didn't think that climb would ever end. But it finally did. A few moments after we got to the top, the copter arrived. We put the agent in and then got in ourselves. The copter lifted up and into the night. We could see the headlights below us. The bad guys had reached our jeep, but we had eluded their grasp. I turned to Zondra and she put out her hand.

"Nice job, partner."

"You too."

ooOoo

The copter flew us to a private airfield in Penang. Zondra and I tended the agent on the way, got his bleeding under control. A medical team met us on the ground and whisked him away. I had no idea who he was or why he had been captured. But the medics did tell me he would be fine.

There were facilities at the private airport for us to us to clean up some. Graham called. He debriefed us quickly. He was obviously pleased with the rescue. It had been louder than I wanted or he hoped, but there was no sign it would become any diplomatic problem. He had a hotel room for us in one of the nicest places in the city. We took a taxi to it and took showers, but we were both keyed up from the mission. Zondra had been in Penang before. She said there was something she had always wanted to try. _Why not? We are celebrating._ We headed out.

We found the place she had in mind: a bar that served snake's blood. They killed the snake at the table (and offered to let you bite out the heart - neither of us was that keyed up) and then they drained the blood into glasses of rice wine. I picked up my glass. She picked up hers. We clinked them together and then downed the shots of blood. For a second, my corpse dream, me-as-zombie, flashed into my mind. I pushed it away. Zondra grinned at me, a slightly bloody grin. I grinned one back. I looked at the bartender ( _snake handler?_ ), waved my hand at our empty glasses.

"Another round."

* * *

 **A/N2** Sarah's studied but not wholly successful attempts to 'depersonalize' her own inner life give her voice here a simultaneous matter-of-factness and dream-like-ness. (At least that was my aim.)

Again, a tricky chapter to write. I need to tell the story of the mission, but that story actually serves as background to Sarah (and Zondra's) story.

Zondra mentions this mission in _vs. the Cat Squad._ Amy adds that this was not a mission of the full team but rather of Sarah and Zondra's. A rescue and shots of snake's blood. A little female agent bonding. Tune in next time as the team begins to fall apart. Chapter 12, "Girls Will Be Girls (Four): Heels?"

Drop me a line as you leave, please.


	12. Girls Will Be Girls (Five)

**A/N1** If you recall, we began this CATs tale with Sarah alone on a park bench, remembering. We begin this chapter by returning to her, and by leaving the first-personal presentation of her POV. ( _Nota Bene:_ It will return later.)

Again, as in the first CATs chapter, there is more than one kind of scene-break here.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER TWELVE

 _Girls Will Be Girls (Part Five)_ :

 _Heels?_

* * *

"So quick bright things come to confusion."  
\- Shakespeare, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_

* * *

Sarah took another sip of her increasingly cool Americano. She stopped digging the trench in the dirt beneath her bench. She was going to ruin her shoes.

 _Ruin_. It went to ruin. All ruined.

Dream Club and Penang had been the beginning of it all. And for a time, Sarah believed...hoped...that maybe she could be CIA, even be Graham's Enforcer, and still have friends, some semblance of a life, a real life.

Not everything with the team ( _the CATs, God, what a name!_ _Had Graham come up with that or some geek analyst?_ ) had gone well. Their primary mission had been a constant source of frustration, eventually of anger and suspicion. She had lost her friends - more or less, anyway, although she and Carina were evidently still...okay...complicated, as they were from the beginning, but okay. They had been out drinking together last night. Sarah owed her hangover to Carina.

* * *

When Sarah and Zondra got back from Penang ( _a little snakebit, I admit_ ) they found Amy much better, her irrepressibly cheery self, and Carina in possession of a new lead on the group, Ricky's group. (Although she had no lead on Ricky himself; he seemed to have somehow dematerialized, vanished.) Despite the failure of the Dream Club mission, Carina had succeeded in getting George under protection and into a rehab center far away. But more than that, she had found another informant.

But that lead had fizzled. The informant had disappeared. The same thing happened again. They could never seem to get closer to the group than they had been that night at Dream Club.

Graham had grown frustrated. He gave the team a mission in Iceland, something, as he put it, to keep them busy. He seemed to hope that maybe a change of venue, a change of pace, would help. They closed up shop in Miami. The four of them headed to Iceland, to Reyjavík. _A serious change of pace from Miami. Carina kept making Ice Queen/Iceland jokes._

The mission was straightforward. There was a gun smuggler working out of the city. He was working from a warehouse in a section of town that was being reclaimed. A couple of nearby warehouses had been converted into night clubs. Zondra, Carina, and Amy showed up at the smuggler's, apparently tipsy, apparently confused about where they were trying to go. While the men in the warehouse gathered to gawk at the women, Sarah slipped into the rear of the warehouse and into the office. She downloaded the contents of the smuggler's laptop while he chatted up Zondra. Sarah got out undetected. _Piece of cake._

Zondra and Carina and Amy 'realized' they were in the wrong place, and got away without anything more than enduring salacious stares and smiles - twenty minutes in which nothing existed higher than their breasts.

The mission had gone so smoothly they found themselves with a couple of unoccupied days in Iceland. They rented a car and drove an hour or so to Grindavík, to the famous Blue Lagoon. They stayed there, enjoying the food, the bar, the amazing spa.

Early on the second and last day, the four of them went together to get floating messages in the geo-thermal pool. They stretched out on floating blue pads in the warm water, covering themselves with heavy, soft blue towels. Steam rose around them. A masseuse in a sort of wetsuit was assigned to each.

Sarah found herself afloat beside Carina. Sarah's body slowly unclenched in the water and under the hands of the masseuse. She could see from Carina's face that the same was happening to her. The masseuses finished and moved on to others who had entered the water.

Just as Sarah was about to drift into sleep, she heard Carina's voice, soft and friendly: "Hey, Headstone, I've been wondering…"

Sarah opened her eyes, but just as slits. "What?"

"Are there any men in your life?"

"Why are you wondering about that ?" Sarah felt a twinge of annoyance. Embarrassment. Carina had been so odd about what she had told Sarah that Sarah expected there to be no more personal confidences between them. But now Carina was asking a personal question. ( _I did not ask her; she volunteered her confidence._ )

Sarah was unsure how to answer. Had she been less comfortable, less relaxed, maybe she would have refused to answer. But she was comfortable and relaxed. The twinge of annoyance passed.

Sarah answered without waiting on Carina's answer: "No."

Carina looked at her measuredly. "You mean, 'No, not now' or 'No, never'?"

Sarah opened her eyes a bit more, the better to take in Carina's expression. But Carina did not seem to be teasing her, poking fun at her.

"I don't know. Both, maybe. And neither."

"Wow, Headstone, you really are like the Sphinx. What was that, an abbreviated form of Buddhist four-cornered negation? _Not something, not nothing, not both, not neither._ "

Sarah sighed. Carina had told Sarah she graduated smart. Sarah: "I mean that there have been men, but none that...mattered." _Is that the right word? What word do I want?_

Carina let a few moments pass. "I've been wondering since that night at Dream Club. I saw you ice over there. I don' t think I've ever seen anything quite like that. It just got me wondering…"

"Why?" _Why did I ask? Damn it, Sarah! If I had been less relaxed, I would've kicked myself._

"Because of what Zondra and Amy told me about you, the whole Enforcer bit. Headstone. I guess I was wondering if maybe it would be hard to combine _that_ work...with love...or sex, even. I remember: the first time I ever wounded someone - a bad guy, a sonofabitch who deserved it and worse - and, still, for days I didn't want to touch anyone and did not want to be touched…And I didn't kill the sonofabitch, and I certainly didn't...execute him."

Sarah felt the warmth leaving her body despite being afloat in the warm water. "Carina, I really can't talk about that stuff; I told you all that at the beginning."

"I know. And I'm not asking about missions or targets. I'm asking about you. You told us all that you don't like the job. I guess that's what I'm wondering about. About how you could dislike the job - and still like yourself...or anyone else…touch or be touched."

Sarah stayed silent.

Carina went on after waiting, forced by the silence into sharing more about herself when she had wanted this to go the other way. "It's just that I like the job. It's been...an escape for me. I get to live other lives. I'm not allowed to fall in love. But not much else is prohibited." She smiled gamely.

"It's a form of freedom. It's not as glamorous as movies and tv make it out to be, I admit, but it has moments of glamor - more than I would likely have known otherwise. And it lets my past be past...unless, of course, I decide to go into confessional mode…And it lets my future go, since I likely won't have one. Eventually, the job will kill me. No need to worry about tax shelters or botox. There's just now, right now. That's how I like it."

Carina looked surprised at herself. Perhaps a little annoyed. The original question had gotten lost - and that was fine with Sarah.

Unfortunately, Carina started toward it again. "I take it you don't find the job a form of freedom? An escape?"

"No."

Carina huffed, half delight, half annoyance. "For a woman as good with languages as you are, you sure under-utilize your gifts when not on a mission." She continued: "You know, where men are concerned, and...well, looking like you do ( _almost_ as lovely as me)," Carina smirked, "you can just take what you need."

Carina's look turned inward, and then Sarah could see Carina hardening from the inside-out.

The sight affected Sarah. She blurted out,"No, Carina. I...What I need can't be...taken."

The hardness gathering behind Carina's eyes shattered. She blinked. Again. Her voice caught as she replied. "Right." She turned away from Sarah. Even facing away, Sarah heard her whisper. "Shit."

Sarah let it go. She drifted into sleep, blissfully corpse-dream-free.

ooOoo

From Iceland, the team moved to Brazil, to Porto Alegre. They were back on the trail of the group they had been after in Miami. There was word of a new presence on the streets, a new source of drugs, and a suggestion that Porto Alegre was serving as a base of operations for the group. The group was also rumored to be moving into new areas: arms dealing and sex slavery. The team put in four long weeks of work, only to be stymied again when they seemed on the brink of success.

And that was how things went for a while. A time in the US, a time in South America, then back. A team with a silly name chasing an elusive group with no official name. Chasing - but never catching, a dog and its tail _Or a cat. Did cats chase their tails? I've never had a pet. I have no idea_. Graham called Sarah away a couple of times, but never again for a mission on which she could take Zondra. She would not have wanted her along for those missions, anyway. Not given what they were.

But despite the team's growing frustration, and despite being called away, Sarah's friendship with Zondra had grown rapidly. It took the form, mostly, of doing things together. They continued running together, going to the gym or a range when they could, and sparring at every opportunity. Carina teased them that they were like cowboy buddies from old Westerns. No talking, constant sweating, intermittent gunplay, and occasional friendly fistfights.

Sarah's friendship with Carina remained puzzling. Carina seemed to like to spend time with Sarah, but only when there was something going on, something to do, others to interact with. She avoided any more one-on-one conversations after the Blue Lagoon, unless the conversation was mission-related. Carina seemed to react to something in Sarah, and she seemed not to want to react to it. Sarah, for her part, was not at all clear what it could be that Carina reacted to unless it was Sarah's silence. Maybe, unlike Sarah (and Zondra), Carina just could not abide dead air.

Carina's difficulties with Sarah resembled Sarah's with Amy. Sarah liked Amy well enough, but Sarah reacted to a neediness in Amy, professional and personal, that made Amy want to latch on to Sarah, to seek her approval, to become close. It all felt too draining and too forced for Sarah, and she pulled back from it. She knew that Amy recognized that pulling back and was hurt by it, but did not have enough emotional reserves to cope with her own struggles and Amy's too.

Still, those months were on balance the happiest Sarah had known. It was a brief respite, a few months of pastels interrupting the battleship gray of her life.

But over time, the continued frustrations of the fruitless chase caused friction. It was hard to credit dumb luck or sheer coincidence for the frustrations. It all seemed…too coincidental. Slowly, Sarah began to feel suspicious of the other three agents. At first, it was not so much a feeling as it was increased vigilance: Zondra's occasional, unexplained absences; Carina's fitful mercurial manner; Amy's sometimes studied cluelessness. But as the frustrations mounted, Sarah's hatred of failure turned increased vigilance into a genuine suspicion.

It was, alongside being frustrating, heartbreaking. In the time she had spent with the women, Sarah had known her first adult female friendships, really her first adult friendships. They limped, as friendships, of course, because Sarah limped in them: despite liking all three women, especially Zondra, Sarah shared almost nothing with them. They knew her from their time together, from intelligence-community rumors, from whatever Graham might have told them, but that was almost all they had. She gave them almost nothing. She hated that, hated that besides being all-too-often a dead-end street, she was always a one-way street.

All take, no give. _Good work, Darlin'! - Shut up, Dad._

She had, in small ways, begun to trust the other women. But that was now taken from her, or at any rate, it sat in uneasy silence beside her suspicions. She had never had anyone to trust. Not her parents, especially not her father; not Graham, certainly not Graham. Beyond Carina's unexplained, sporadic confidences, no one had ever trusted her. Sarah did not really trust herself.

She finally voiced her suspicions to Graham. He blew out a breath; he had the same suspicions. He told her he would look into it quietly. It was her turn to blow out a breath. She felt like she had put a torch to a bridge.

ooOoo

Sarah and Zondra had been out, having lunch at Remo's, a hamburger/hotdog dive in Miami that Sarah had found. She had gotten Zondra hooked on it too. They had gorged on burgers - Sarah with extra pickles, Zondra with extra onions. They had shared an order of fries. The burgers were the closest to Mort's at Ground Chuck that Sarah had eaten since leaving San Diego. Sharing a burger with Zondra made her think of long afternoons with Gale, laughing and talking, teasing Mort about his misunderstandings of art and art history ( _Surrealism! I learned a lot from Gale_ ).

They had finished and gone back to the condo. When they got there, a CIA team was inside, having gone over every inch of the place, including all the possessions of the women. Sarah's things had been searched too. Zondra had turned to Sarah when they entered, just as soon as they found the CIA team finishing the sweep. Sarah had not been able to hide her immediate understanding of what was happening from Zondra. Sudden suspicion replaced Zondra's smile.

A few minutes later, Sarah's phone rang. Graham. She answered, moving to her bedroom as she did. The CIA team's leader had reported to Graham. He ordered Sarah, Zondra, Carina, and Amy to the Miami CIA substation right away. Sarah got to relay the order. The women were all suspicious now, and worried. During the ride to the substation, they all eyed each other.

ooOoo

Sarah had talked with Graham by phone at the substation. When they arrived, they had all surrendered their weapons and the three CIA women, their badges. Sarah had been taken to a teleconference room; the others had been taken to an empty conference room.

Sarah stood at the door of the conference room and bit the inside of her lip, biting for pain, biting back tears - the disappointment and anger mixed in her and threatened to boil over in waterworks. But that would not do. She had to face this. She opened the door.

The three women, seated around a large conference table, looked up at her in unison. They all looked down at her hand. Sarah was holding a single suede boot, fashionable and heeled.

Zondra's. One of a favorite pair.

Then everyone was looking at Zondra. She colored. Sarah could see anger flash on her face.

"Carina, Amy - I need you to step outside. You can leave, if you want, go back to the condo. I need to talk to Zondra." Amy stood up and headed toward the door, taking one quick look back at Zondra. Carina moved more slowly; she looked at Zondra but then looked hard at Sarah as she left.

When the door closed behind Carina, Sarah tossed the boot like a softball onto the table. It landed and slid to a stop right in front of Zondra.

"There's a transmitter in the heel, Z. Not ours. Wrong make. Wrong frequencies. _Wrong_. Talk."

Zondra met Sarah's gaze squarely. "So lunch was a set-up. Did you suspect me? For how long? I thought...I thought we were friends." The anger on Zondra's face had turned sad, but it had not left.

 _I thought we were too. I did. What was I thinking?_ Sarah shrugged, making Zondra glower. "I guess not."

"That's not mine," Zondra began, pointing at the boot, "I mean the transmitter. Boot's mine, of course. I don't know how the transmitter got into it."

"But it is there, Z. And someone has been informing on us. We've all had that thought. And, no, lunch was not a set-up. I had no idea Graham was planning to invade our condo, sweep it." Sarah could not stop herself from offering the explanation. This was killing her. _Trust is such a bad idea. - Good girl, Darlin'. - Shut up, Dad._

"Sarah, you know me. We trust each other. I did not do this. Do I seem to you like someone whose spy-imagination was formed watching _The Wild Wild West_? That. Is. Not. Mine. This is a set-up, Sarah."

Sarah wanted to believe her. She wanted to trust her. She could not. "Tell me why, Z. Money? What did they promise you?"

Zondra's eyes darkened at that, at Sarah's rejection of her appeal. Her face hardened behind her eyes. "You know, Walker, you need something to hold onto in this life. There has to be something real. If you are faking everything, then you are fake. You know me. You know we are friends. That's real. Not part of the job. It's you and me. Us. Something I hold onto. Throw the damn book away, ignore your lists, tell Graham to go fuck himself...and _trust yourself_. I did not do this. You know I didn't." Although the content of Zondra's speech was entreatment, her tone was cool, challenging, not imploring. She managed to make the speech more about Sarah than about herself.

Sarah's anger finally boiled over. "You can say that with the boot there in front of you? I am just supposed to ignore the evidence? Would you, if the situation were reversed? Would you?" She pointed the conversation back to Zondra.

Zondra dropped her gaze for a second. Then she lifted it again. "Yes, Walker, I would have. But it doesn't matter now. Damage done. We're done. Tell Graham I want to take a lie detector test. And tell him that when I pass it, I'm done with you and the CATs. He can take that as he wants. If he fires me, fine. If he keeps me on, fine.

"But we are done, Walker. I was wrong about you. I thought there was a core of something, something real, in you. Maybe you don't like the job, but I now know how you can do it. There's no one at home, is there, Walker? You don't like the job - but that hasn't stopped you from _becoming_ the job." Zondra shot Sarah one final look of defiance, then suddenly she picked up the boot and hurled it at Sarah. Sarah dodged it easily enough, much more easily than she could dodge Zondra's words.

ooOoo

Graham told Sarah the next day that Zondra had passed the lie detector test. He had granted Zondra's request to be reassigned. The CATs were done. The team was ultimately a failure - and in more than one sense. Amy was reassigned right away and left the condo a couple of days after the discovery of the transmitter. Her goodbye was tearful and almost more than Sarah could bear since it stirred together the pain and frustration of the team's failure, and the fresh pain of the break with Zondra.

Carina stayed a day or two, helping Sarah shut the operation down. Carina was going to go on chasing the group, chasing Ricky. Carina did have one piece of good news. George had gotten out of rehab and been relocated. Indications were that he was doing well in his new life.

Sarah did not know what to make of the result of Zondra's lie detector test. Maybe Zondra was innocent. But the damage was done; the friendship was ruined.

Carina insisted that Sarah go out drinking with her on the last night. They drank. A lot. But they did not talk. Conversation was a strain. Carina seemed worried about revelations if they talked. Sarah was too hurt and too empty to dredge up words at all. They drank. They danced. They drank. They danced. They taxied back to the condo and collapsed into their beds.

* * *

Carina had caught a plane this morning, off to some location she could not share with Sarah. Sarah was not sure she would see her again. She was not sure she would see any of them again. Graham had called at first light, pulling Sarah from her corpse-dream into her hangover. She would fly out tonight. New Enforcer mission. A termination in Thailand. After a brief sojourn in the Land of the Living, Sarah was back where she belonged, in Shadowland, a zombie with a gun.

Zondra was right. Sarah _was_ the job. She was nothing but a spy. Nothing real in her, not anywhere. Shadows everywhere but shadows of nothing substantial.

She slowly poured the dregs of her now cold Americano into the trench she dug. She watched them soak into the dirt. Burial. No resurrection. Then she took herself in hand and went to close the condo, to claim her suitcase.

Mission.

* * *

 **A/N2** A darkling transitional chapter but built around important conversations, conversations that will stick with our heroine.

We now head into what I have dubbed 'the three B's': _Bryce, Baby, and Burbank._

As you might guess, we are not yet done with Carina in these pre-canon chapters. Oh, and some other characters still have scheduled reappearances too.

Tune in next for Chapter 13 (fitting): Bryce. "Not Something, Not Nothing".


	13. Not Nothing (One)

**A/N1** We now transition into our next story in the sequence, the Bryce story. This will take time to tell, probably three or four chapters. There are still some CATs loose ends to tie up, and I have taken a liberty with canon, as you will discover below. It is a small one, but it is one, nonetheless. Still working with two kinds of scene-break.

Thanks for the reviews and PMs.

Some remarks on BL in A/N2.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 _Not Nothing, Not Something (Part One)_ :

 _Bryce Larkin_

* * *

B movie, that's all you're to me  
Just a soft soap story  
Don't want the woman to adore me  
You can't stand it when it goes from reel to reel  
To real too real  
You can't stand it when I throw punch lines you can feel  
\- Elvis Costello, _B Movie_

* * *

The next thirty-some months were another red blur or a continuation of the first. Sarah was uncertain how blurs were counted.

For reasons known only to him, Graham had slowed the pace of Sarah's wetwork. But it had not stopped. And he had not slowed her pace generally. She was taking life less often, but still taking other things: information, plans, weapons, whatever Graham directed. Thievery was often the order of her day - and her night. Seduction missions came up occasionally, and Sarah found that her time with the CATs, particularly time watching Carina and Amy, had made her both better at those missions and even more unhappy about them. She was still able always to plan and sometimes to use an exit strategy (nothing had happened to her on those missions), but the thought of what happened to Amy made her plan even more obsessively.

Those missions took a toll in another way. They underlined, in heavy strokes, Sarah's desperate loneliness. She was never tempted by a mark or an asset - and if she had been it would not have mattered: she had her professional line and she would not cross it. But tempting them made her aware of how devoid of companionship, particularly male companionship, she was. When she thought about that (rarely, she violently fought the thought back anytime it appeared), she knew she was not using 'companionship' as a euphemism for 'sex'. That was part of what she meant, of course, but not all that she meant.

She wanted a _companion_. Someone to share herself with, to share himself with her. Someone who cared about _her_. Usually, the marks and the assets looked at her and saw a body, nothing more. But when they did, waking remnants of Sarah's corpse-dream would always return, flittering darkly around her. A _body_ \- a corpse, a dead person - a body. She wanted a man who looked at her and saw a soul, saw some _one_ , not some _thing_. A man who wanted that someone, wanted her, wanted to be close to her.

But her life was ruthlessly against that. And, truth be told, it terrified her as much as it attracted her. _No companion for Sarah. None._ Graham preferred her alone, a lone wolf, unencumbered. He had barely concealed his satisfaction when Sarah was free of the CATs and dove back into her role as Enforcer. And she did dive back in. It was the surest way past the pain of the break with Zondra, the loss her...friends. That was one list Sarah kept and it kept growing, her list of lost friends.

But the worst part of the time after the CATs was that Sarah could feel a numbness growing in herself. Zondra accused her of becoming the job. Perhaps that was not true when Zondra said it but it was true, or very nearly true, now. She could feel her spy life becoming more routinized, automatic and blank. She was constantly performing missions the way people sometimes drove their cars - on autopilot, doing all that was required, but with no specific memory of what that had been as they pulled into their driveways: they had been somewhere else, now they were home. That was happening to her. She had been starting a mission, now it was done. - Every trigger pull, every false touch, every lie, blanked, maybe killed, parts of her. She felt emptier than ever; she had no idea how that was possible. She had been empty at the beginning.

She had been in a long, lone flight, running from the voice of her conscience. Painful as that flight had been, as much as she had tried to distance herself from the sound, to still that small voice in her head, another part of her had been glad of it, welcomed it. It was her lifeline: her Ariadne's thread that might lead her out of the mazeways of her current life, leading her into a life she knew she wanted but could only barely imagine.

But the voice was less vocal now, more often still, unsounding, and she felt like she was losing the thread. On most days, she was nothing but cold, dark silence within. Maybe the marks and assets were right in what they saw. Maybe she was now a soulless body. Corpse. Zombie with a gun. Maybe Carina was right: if Sarah was just a body, maybe she should just take what she needed - bed one of the many men who had offered. But maybe she, Sarah, was right: maybe what she needed could not be taken. But maybe a corpse had no needs of the sort Sarah took herself to have. Maybe it was all an illusion: there was nothing more to hope for from a man's embrace than a shuddering finish and a quick exit. Body on body, then body done with body. A flickering play of desolate fantasies, less even than a dream: no one at home ( _Right, Z, right._ ); no someone in sight. Maybe Carina was right.

Carina. Sarah huffed internally, silently, but not wholly in frustration. There was also gratitude. _Carina._ With Carina, always frustration _and_ gratitude.

* * *

Carina's unexpected re-entry into Sarah's life was one thing that had helped Sarah hold on. Sarah had been in France, in Lyon, putting her things away after another successful ( _what does that word mean to me anymore?_ ) mission. There was a knock on her hotel room door. Her S&W was immediately in her hand. She peeked out through the small lens in the door and saw Carina smirking into the lens, expecting to be seen.

"Who is it?" Sarah asked just to pique Carina, although she was glad to see her; Sarah's spirits rose the moment she saw Carina.

"Like you didn't see me. I saw the peephole darken, Headstone. Open up."

Sarah did at last open the door, though she made herself count to ten before she did. When she opened the door, Carina's smirk grew. "Long time, no see." Carina stalked through the door, looked at Sarah's gun, lifted up her own wheeled suitcase and threw it on the bed. "Change of plans. You're staying in France for an extra day. Got the DEA chief to okay it with Graham."

Sarah walked to the dresser, put down the gun, and picked up her phone. A text from Graham. New flight info and two words, "Carina Miller." Sarah was surprised that Graham agreed to this, had let Carina know where to find her. Sarah's whereabouts were among Graham's most closely guarded secrets.

"I convinced my boss that I needed you. He convinced Graham. Truth be told, my mission is done. I just wanted to see you. See how you are." She took a couple of steps toward Sarah and gave her the once-over. "God, Headstone, you look more exhausted than you first did in Miami. Graham is a true piece of work. Have you had any time off in the last year?"

Sarah shook her head. " _Sooooooon-uuuuva-biiiitch_. Graham. Graham is a sonofabitch. It's like he thinks you came with an expiration date, you know, like one of those replicants in that Harrison Ford movie, _Blade Runner_. He's got to get all the good out of you before you _go_. Expire."

The thought made Sarah shudder. She wasn't sure about replicants, but the thought of being a creation, Graham's creation, chilled her. Graham's role in her life was becoming increasingly a concern to her. His peculiar micromanagement of her. The timing of events. She was beginning to suspect that there were few coincidences in her life since before Graham had found her among the trees, back in San Diego.

But she had no time to follow up on the suspicion. And there was a part of her that did not want to know. Knowing it might mean that she would find out that there was yet less that was real in her life, maybe nothing that was.

Sarah narrowed her eyes at Carina. " _You_ watch sci-fi movies?"

Carina turned away to open her suitcase. "Not really. A little, once. In another life. I knew someone who did." She rummaged in her suitcase and pulled out a little black dress. She waved it in the air. "Put on something festive, Headstone. We're going out."

Sarah found a dress. They went out, found a nice place. The music was loud enough for dancing, but not so loud that it was impossible to talk. They sat down at a corner table, both with their backs to a wall. They ordered drinks. A couple of men came up and asked them to dance. Sarah was not sure what to say. She had not been in a club since the CATs disbanded. She had not really talked to a man when she wasn't undercover since then. Carina dismissed them. Sarah shot her a questioning glance.

"I had plenty on my mission. Thought I'd keep the Ice Queen from showing; tonight's for us."

Sarah gazed at Carina. She looked tired too. And...harder...than she had looked when they met in Miami. Carina returned Sarah's gaze.

"So, how're tricks?" Carina asked, her familiar smirk taking over her features after the waitress dropped off their drinks.

Sarah looked down, unsure what Carina was asking, unsure if she would answer if she were. She started to shrug, but Carina reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. "How are you, Sarah?"

"Okay, I guess. Tired, like you said. Tired, like you look."

Carina nodded. "I am. It's been a long year. Months in deep cover before the last, shorter mission." Carina paused, taking stock. "But I don't want to talk about that. I've put it behind me. Have you been Enforcing?"

They both knew what Carina was asking this time, no mistake. Sarah sighed. "Yes, some. Not so much. But, yes, some."

"Have you heard from Zondra?"

Sarah felt her stomach tighten. "No, I didn't expect to, given how things ended. You? Amy?"

"I saw Amy briefly once in DC. She was Amy. Perky. Not a peep from Zondra though."

"Any luck finding Ricky?"

Carina scowled. "Augusto, Augusto Gaez. That's his name. I was in DC chasing him actually, not visiting DEA headquarters, or anything like that, when I ran into Amy. As always, he got away. The dark gods smile on that slimebag, I tell you."

"If you ever need any help with him, let me know. I'll _make_ Graham let me help. I will come right away, no matter where. He deserves...Well, he's got a date with destiny."

Carina raised her glass in a toast. Sarah matched her gesture. Silence fell on them.

It felt familiar and unfamiliar sitting there with Carina, toasting. In the final months of the CATs, they had all been in clubs fairly often on missions. Carina had made it a habit of redirecting men who were interested in Sarah toward herself. She smirkingly called it taking what Sarah wanted, but Sarah had never really wanted any of the men. It had seemed more as if Carina was warding off the men than taking them, as if the fact that they could be redirected proved something to Carina.

Sarah knew that Carina's comments about the Ice Queen were, like her use of 'Headstone', jokes that were not just jokes. Sarah wondered what it all meant, how to fit Carina's behavior toward her together with Carina's personal confessions and subsequent repentings.

"Why are you here, Carina?"

Carina shrugged, the gesture an embodied quotation of Sarah's common reaction to Carina's questions. Sarah smiled through her momentary annoyance.

Carina then smiled too. "I just wondered about you. I wanted to see you. We're friends."

"Are we, Carina? I wasn't sure after Miami; we didn't talk that last night. We just drank and we danced. We did a lot of both, as I sort of recall."

"We did. What was there to say? You never talk, really. The only topic on our minds was depressing as hell. I've been trying to catch up with you for a while, but you are seriously hard to find. It took lying about a mission to get to you this time." Carina looked around carefully. She reached into her bag and retrieved a burner phone. She handed it to Sarah, and Sarah quickly put it in her bag. "My number's on it. Give me yours." Sarah rattled off a number known only to Graham and to her. Carina closed her eyes and focused. "Got it."

"Stay in touch. Don't let Graham have the final say on you, Headstone. Don't let me. Don't let anyone but you have the final say." Carina gave Sarah a long, significant stare. Sarah finally nodded, not entirely sure what she was agreeing to do.

Carina grabbed her arm. "C'mon, I love this song."

She and Carina stayed in sporadic face-to-face contact after that visit, otherwise talking by burner phone as often as they could make time - so, infrequently. Somehow, the occasional doses of Carina's version of crazy helped Sarah to keep a grip on sane, to keep threading her way in the dark.

* * *

A _ding_ , then the dimming seatbelt light forced Sarah back to where she was: in a plane, on the tarmac, at a Reagan Airport gate, just having arrived. Graham had called her back in. She was not sure why. She deplaned and pulled her suitcase behind her. She would stop at her apartment and stow her baggage - she had not been there for months - and then she would go to meet with Graham.

ooOoo

Sarah walked into Graham's office after his assistant opened the door. Graham was standing behind his desk. A man in a suit was seated in front of Graham, his back to Sarah. Graham smiled with apparent excitement as she came in. Sarah could tell from behind that the man's suit was not standard CIA attire. It was expensive and tailored. The man stood and turned.

At first, Sarah was struck by how pretty he was. The suit was not just tailored but beautifully tailored, fitting the man perfectly. He had thick, wavy dark hair above his intense blue eyes. His smile was winning and...familiar. Sarah shook her head inwardly. Where?...Who?...And then she knew. It was the man she and Zondra had rescued in Panang. He had been in the dark mostly there, beaten, missing teeth. But she was sure it was him.

"Agent Sarah Walker," Graham began, his voice rich with ceremony, "let me introduce you, _formally introduce you_ , to Agent Bryce Larkin. But I believe you have met."

Bryce stepped toward Sarah, extending his hand. Sarah shook it as Graham continued: "Yes, I believe you two have met, albeit in extreme circumstances."

"Yes," Bryce added quickly, jumping in, "and I have never forgotten. Who could forget Agent Walker? I would've remembered even if she hadn't saved my life." Bryce turned his winning smile up to eleven, giving Sarah its full effect. She felt it; she felt momentarily woozy. She realized she was still shaking Bryce's hand.

"Please, both of you, sit." Graham took himself up on his own offer and seated himself behind his desk. Sarah took the other chair in front of it. Bryce sat back down.

Sarah could feel Bryce's eyes on her as they both sat down. It made her feel uneasy. He was hard to read, she realized, much harder than most men she had met. She stole a glance at him from the corner of her eye. _Yes, still pretty._

"Agent Walker, Agent Larkin has been on a deep cover assignment in Russia. He has gotten close to a serious player in the Russian oligarchy, a man who we fear has gained access to caches of serious Soviet weapons, perhaps including nuclear warheads. But the man, Dobry Orlov, has a requirement for anyone who advances in his organization - the person must be married."

Graham made a quick, dismissive motion with his hand. "Orlov's a throwback, old-fashioned in lots of ways, and he believes that family men are more loyal and easier to motivate. Bryce has told Orlov he has a wife but has not yet had to produce her. I would like you to partner with Bryce, to assume the cover of his wife, and to go to Russia with him and help him infiltrate more deeply into Orlov's organization, to find out what weapons Orlov is sitting on and what plans he has for them."

Sarah nodded noncommittally. "But Agent Larkin is here in the States."

Bryce responded, chuckling good-naturedly, "Yes, and Orlov believes I have come to fetch my wife and relocate her to Moscow, where Orlov is headquartered. You should know, Agent Walker, that this is a very dangerous mission. Orlov and his men are absolutely ruthless. If they have the slightest suspicion about us, they will kill me and kill you immediately and without a second thought, and with no fear of reprisal. Orlov has men in serious positions of power in the government. Orlov is slow to trust. Even with the time I have put in, and even if I produce you, it could be weeks or months before I am in a position to find out what we hope to find out." Bryce looked from Sarah to Graham, who was watching them both closely.

"Agent Larkin requested you in particular, Agent Walker. Given the importance of the mission, I was willing to allow you to be co-opted from your normal...work. Agent Larkin has...some idea of that work. But the decision I will leave up to you. Why don't you and Agent Larkin take some time this evening and talk the mission over? You can make your decision tomorrow." Graham looked at Bryce.

Bryce turned to Sarah. "Could we meet somewhere for dinner and talk as we eat? I am sick to death of Russian food. And Director Graham here has me on an expense account, so money is no object…" Bryce grinned at Graham, who smirked but nodded.

Sarah was not overjoyed about the prospect of dinner. Bryce's blue stare still made her uneasy, although it was not quite the objectifying stare that Sarah was all-too-used to, it was not exactly...warm. There was an element of appraisal in it: she felt like she was being weighed and measured, like an actress at a casting call. She had been leery of male agents since the Farm. And she had never had a partner, except for the CATs, for Zondra. And no male partners.

Graham leaned forward. "If that is the plan, I would expect to hear your decision tomorrow by noon, Agent Walker."

"Yes, sir, I will let you know." She stood up, feeling all at once as if the room had become slightly warm and claustrophobic. She turned to Bryce. "Meet me at Old Ebbitt Grill at 8 pm?"

He grinned. "Sure. Love their oysters." Sarah tried not to react to that in any way.

She left Graham's office, Bryce still standing there, grinning.

Sarah drove her rental back to her apartment. She would not be getting the Porsche out on this trip to DC. That disappointed her, probably a lot more than it should have. She got to her apartment. It was cold and empty. She turned up the thermostat. She climbed into the shower and stood under the hot water like a statue in a rainstorm.

She made herself get out after a while. She dried off and got dressed. She put on a red blouse and some dark jeans, a pair of low boots and a favorite black leather jacket. She put on no makeup and pulled her hair back in a simple ponytail. She wanted to look presentable, but she did not want to feel like she was going to an audition, or trying to somehow impress Bryce Larkin.

Sarah had chosen Old Ebbitt Grill because she knew it would be crowded. It was a good place to go, but it did not suggest that this was an intimate dinner for two. Tourists and political workers frequented the place. She and Bryce would have the protection of the general hubbub for their conversation.

ooOoo

When Sarah arrived, Bryce was already there. He was seated at the long, gleaming bar, chatting with a small, pretty brunette bartender. He had changed out of his suit into a black sweater and jeans, tennis shoes and a dark red Stanford baseball cap. _Still pretty._

He saw Sarah and waved to her through the crowd. She made her way to the bar. As she drew near, the bartender looked at her and went on to another customer. Bryce watched Sarah the entire way. When she reached him, he stood and quickly glanced at his watch.

"Jack should have our table ready. Do you know him?" Sarah shook her head. "He owns the place. I've known him for years." Just as Bryce finished, an older man carrying two menus made his way to them. He smiled at Sarah and told Bryce the table was ready.

Bryce had managed to get them a table off to the side of the high-traffic area. They sat down and Jack gave them their menus. He asked if they wanted drinks. Sarah asked for a beer and Bryce followed suit. Jack left the table.

Bryce started right in. "So, what more can I tell you about the mission?"

Sarah folded her hands on the table and looked at them for a moment. "Tell me more about how I got chosen...asked...first."

Bryce's expression became almost embarrassed. "Well, that story does not go exactly the way Graham suggested."

Sarah raised one eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yes. See, I wanted to know you...know about you since the rescue. But Graham wouldn't tell me anything. I eventually put what happened together with some...rumors I have heard, and I knew you had to have been Graham's Enforcer, his Wildcard, the...well, I figured out it was you. I asked him if we could work together but he stonewalled me. So, once I got fixed up from the beating in Penang, Graham gave me another deep cover assignment. It was in Europe. Doesn't matter. But he would not grant my request to have you as my partner, and it was a two-agent, male-female sort of mission."

Bryce's voice thickened and slowed to a stop for a moment. "That mission went well until the end, when it collapsed. My partner...she was killed as we tried to get away. We got compromised at the eleventh hour; I still don't know how, I still don't know who." He stopped again and looked away, and when he looked back he gave her a sad, embarrassed grimace. "I still blame myself for that - I should have seen it coming." Bryce sat quietly. Jack arrived with the beer. He took their orders and left.

Sarah studied Bryce as he ordered. His earlier emotion seemed genuine, but she was still finding him hard to read.

As Jack left again, Bryce continued. "I worked solo after that for a while again. But then this mission came and I was deep in when I realized Orlov had his 'family men only' policy. I lobbied for you again, and this time Graham relented. I don't know why."

Sarah wondered about that too. After the implosion of the CATs, she had expected to work alone for the rest of her career. The only obvious explanation was that Graham rated the mission high enough to allow her to partner with Bryce. It was also obvious that Graham liked Bryce.

Sarah offered no explanation. She just shrugged. But then she added, softly, "Sorry to hear about your partner." Then it hit Sarah: part of the reason she could not read Bryce, part of the reason she felt like she was auditioning. She was being compared to someone else. "Wait. The earlier mission. She wasn't just your partner?"

Bryce looked surprised, but then he dropped his chin a bit. "No, not just my partner. We were...um...together."

"Sorry." Sarah wanted to shift topics now, uncomfortable. "So tell me more about this mission."

Bryce gathered himself and launched into a more detailed version of what she had heard in Graham's office. Sarah listened, making mental notes, asking occasional questions. Orlov was a dangerous, powerful man. Somewhat surprisingly, given Sarah's experience with the type, he was married, and happily - at least as happily as being evil would allow. His wife was an American expat, Martha, almost two decades younger than Orlov. She was disconnected from her husband's real life. She spent most of her time socializing, shopping or traveling. Bryce had seen her once or twice in passing, but other than noting that she was attractive, he had not had a chance to form any real impression of her. But Bryce knew that the wives of the other 'lieutenants' spent a lot of time with her. If Sarah joined the mission, she would likely be expected to become part of Martha's circle.

Bryce wound down, then fixed Sarah with a stare. "So, what about you? Are the rumors, the legends, true? I've seen you in action, so I have no trouble believing…" He smiled at her with real respect.

Sarah was not disposed to answer, but the feeling of his respect moved her to say a little. "Yes, and no. The...numbers...are exaggerated, the feats...overblown…I just do the job." As she uttered the words, her exhaustion and demoralization fell on her again. For a little while, they had been forgotten. She had gotten caught up in the conversation. In Bryce.

He noticed the change and did not press his question. Their food arrived and they ate in mostly comfortable silence. As they finished, Bryce told her a little about himself, about his pre-CIA days. He had been an undergraduate at Stanford, hence the hat. He didn't tell her much that counted as personal, but Sarah was surprised at how forthcoming he was. She could not match him there. She listened but did not reciprocate. Still, dinner was pleasant, and as it finished, she found herself wishing it could go on.

Bryce paid the bill and walked with her outside. As they parted, he leaned in toward her. She stiffened, her hand slipping to the back of her jacket, to the knife in her waistband. But Bryce just touched her cheek with his lips, a brush really, and stepped back. She relaxed but wondered if he had noticed her reaction. One reaction she knew he had noticed. She could feel a blush burning on her face.

"So, Sarah, the mission?"

"I'm in. I will call Graham in the morning." Bryce gave her a wide, warm smile and headed up the street.

He had kissed _her_. A peck, really, but still, _her_ , not a cover. Her, not a body. She could tell he was ...interested. _That_ was a bad idea, and she would have to make that clear to him - but it was pleasing and flattering too. And, she thought, as she watched him walk away, _he is very pretty._ Then she thought about his dead partner and about what passed for relationships among spies ( _really, serial one-night stands_ ), and she made herself stop thinking about him as pretty. He was her partner. They had a mission. _Nothing will happen. End of story_.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for the Moscow mission and more of Sarah and Bryce. Chapter 14, "Not Nothing, Not Something (Two): Falling Together".

Liberty-taking: There is no reason to think Bryce was the man rescued in Penang, but it seemed like a useful way of bringing him into Sarah's story, and in particular, a tone-setting way of doing it.

* * *

Medieval philosophers had a motto: _Authority has a nose of wax._ What they meant was that the canon, previous philosophers' writings and scripture, could be made to look a variety of ways, made to fit an interpretation.

I mention this because I believe Bryce has a nose of wax. He is the most under-interpreted character in the canon (even more than Sarah). His motivations are unclear - perhaps contradictory. We are told or shown very little about him.

I have characterized him in a variety of ways across my stories, holding fast only to certain features: an almost inalienable self-satisfaction, a matching glamorous conception of himself as a spy, a difficulty discriminating between reality and fantasy, a certain dandyism. (All of these I take to be firmly anchored in the canon.) His treatment of Chuck, and his implied treatment of Sarah (when he goes 'rogue') show a tendency to arrogation, to the assumption that he knows best, and show a willingness to act summarily on that assumption, effectively depriving those involved of their own decisions, their own freedom.

The difficulty in characterizing Bryce, though, is really this: he has to be a man that Chuck could genuinely believe to be his best friend, and he has to be a man for whom Sarah could genuinely believe she has romantic feelings - all the while being _Bryce_ , the guy who does the things he does to Chuck and to Sarah, who has the features he has.

Since I am here focused on Sarah, I set aside the question about Bryce's relationship to Chuck (at least for now, more on that later). The difficulty here is explaining Sarah's involvement with Bryce. Yes, as I make a point of having Sarah note in the chapter, _he is pretty_. But I have tried to make it clear - as I believe her eventual, decisive fall for Chuck shows - that although she is by no means immune to Bryce's good looks, that will not be the decisive feature for Sarah. Very handsome men have made offers in the past and been rebuffed. Sarah is haunted and unhappy, but she is not shallow. In fact, a huge part of her hauntedness and unhappiness is that she is emotionally _deep_ , even while she fights against her deep emotional responses, or tries somehow to ignore them.

The backstory developing here for Bryce is supposed to provide a richer context for their relationship, provide Sarah a way of seeing Bryce that makes it evident why she becomes involved with him, and to provide a richer context for understanding what the relationship both meant and did not mean to her. I have tried to set 'parameters' for what she wants and needs from a relationship. The question now is whether or to what extent Bryce meets the 'parameters'.

If you are celebrating Thanksgiving in the US, I hope you are having a terrific holiday weekend. If not, I hope you are having a terrific weekend.


	14. Not Nothing (Two)

**A/N1** We are in the final stages before Burbank. A couple more of these Bryce chapters to go. They will be busy chapters. Then we head to Budapest, to reckon with a new handler and 'a package.' After that, Burbank. I know this has been a long, sad tale. Much of it has been no fun to write. But I wanted to tell a story that I thought fit the woman in Burbank, in all her close, silent complicatedness.

This was one of those _no fun to write_ chapters.

Thanks for reading and reviewing.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 _Not Nothing, Not Something (Part Two)_ :

 _Falling Together_

* * *

Four seasons in one day  
Lying in the depths of your imagination  
Worlds above and worlds below  
The sun shines on the black clouds hanging over the domain  
Even when you're feeling warm  
The temperature could drop away  
Like four seasons in one day  
\- Crowded House, _Four Seasons in One Day_

* * *

 **To:** Langston Graham, Director

 **From:** Donald Melden, Agent

 **Re:** Agent Sarah Walker, Unofficial Evaluation Report

Langston,

I have completed my re-evaluation of Agent Walker. I have consulted mission reports and have observed her on missions. My impressions this time are much as they were four years ago. Agent Walker remains the best agent you have in the field - but you know that. After the loss of Hannah Traylor, the only other female agent who possesses remotely comparable gifts is Zondra Rizzo. Among male agents, only Bryce Larkin can be compared to her.

Agent Walker is the best agent you have in the field, yes - but she needs to come out of the field, out of the cold. She is again nearing burn-out. In fact, she is nearer to it now than she was when I evaluated her before. She is showing signs of losing herself altogether. She now does not veer left or right when performing missions; she does not deviate and does not seem to see anyone or anything around her except in mission-related terms. She has become _automatic_ \- in both a good _and_ a bad sense.

I observed no incident like the one with the little girl and her lost teddy bear. I did, however, discover one hopeful (to me) sign. Agent Walker seems to have remained friends with the DEA agent, Carina Miller. I observed a meeting between them in Dublin. Agent Walker needs that friendship; I encourage you to turn a blind eye to it. You know that Agent Walker can only function as you want, for as long as you hope, if you keep her on the razor's edge. Keeping her there is cruel, in my opinion, even if, as you claim, she has done the US and its citizens an incalculable amount of good. I do not believe that justifies your manipulation of her, your ruination of her. Because you and I both know _that_ is what is coming. Perhaps you can delay it for a time, perhaps she can continue to beat the odds for a time, but this ends with her irreparably damaged or with her dead.

If you want her to keep working, keep her in the field, then she at least needs another change, a change like the CATs - partner or partners again, a chance to make real contact with other human beings again. You have kept her in the crucible for seven long years with no real break. Even as a CAT, she was still your Enforcer.

I understand that there is no one who can replace her, but it is time for you to settle for someone else or some other way to do the job you have had her doing.

Anyway, aren't you now doubled over with that top secret AI project you've been pursuing? Why not focus solely on it and give Agent Walker a break?

I realize this re-evaluation will not please you, but, frankly, I no longer care. I expect you to destroy it, but please note the attached resignation letter, effective immediately. No doubt, you will judge that I have gone soft, that I have lost the nerve needed to do the job. Perhaps I have. But perhaps I have worked my way back to human decency, and finally found the courage for it?

Donald

 **Secure Email: End**

 **Attachment**

* * *

Moscow, the destination.

Sarah was seated in first class ( _thanks, Langston Graham_ ) with Bryce. They were talking in low tones, working out the details of their married life - their cover married life. Analysts had constructed the outline and been building public records. They were filling in the rest.

He was Bryce Anderson, she Sarah Anderson. They had been married for three years. No children, but they were beginning to consider that possibility. They had met in New York - on a blind date arranged by a mutual friend. They had hit it off and had a whirlwind romance, marrying only six months after their first date. Sarah had been working in the city while Bryce was working in Moscow. (Sarah was not supposed to suspect Bryce's real work; they would mirror in their marriage the structure of Dobry and Martha's.)

They worked on little details. Anecdotes (meet cute, first date, 'their song', engagement, first fight, meddling in-laws), names and other items (in-laws, mutual friends, colleges, majors, favorite books, colors). They even settled on a short list of baby names, boy and girl, in case someone asked if they had ever thought about it.

Sarah enjoyed it. Bryce was smart. He was not quick-witted, exactly, or spontaneously funny. (He took himself a bit too seriously to run the risks required to be spontaneously funny.) But he saw humor in things and was willing to point it out. With the complicated exception of Carina, Sarah had never really known anyone spontaneously funny, and few who were humorous. Graham had convinced her she was not funny. But she enjoyed Bryce's asides during the backstory work, especially when he used it to deflect potentially embarrassing moments, like working out on which of their dates they had first slept together. (The third seemed too obvious, the sixth too slow. They settled on the fourth.) Bryce had been surprised Sarah wanted to work out that detail. He told her that none of the men in Dobry's organization would ever ask about that. She told him that all of the women in Martha's circle would surely ask about that. Sarah blushed when she saw him glance at her, surprised.

"Women like to talk between or among themselves. About...things." Sarah didn't, but her time with the CATs and with Gale suggested it was so.

"Well, I bow to your expertise, Sarah. Is there anything else we need to work on?"

Sarah did not want to do it, but she felt like she had to, so she made herself answer. "We need to talk about us behind closed doors." She made a gesture from him to herself.

"Obviously, we will be sharing your apartment in Moscow. It makes sense for us to share a bed, just in case - but I want you to understand what 'share' will mean. I realize that you were _together_ with your last partner. But I don't work like that; I don't want that kind of complication."

She paused. "I don't mean to suggest for a moment that being a couple caused what happened to her to happen, but I do not want to do anything that distracts me, us, from the mission." She made herself stop, gave him a chance to respond.

"Sarah, your reputation precedes you. Graham told me what to expect if you agreed to do this. I promise; I will be nothing but professional. We will be roommates pretending to be married. But the pretending will not extend to the bedroom."

Sarah looked him in the eye for a moment, and then, satisfied, she nodded. "Good. Sorry if that was awkward."

Bryce gave her an odd look.

"What?"

"She knew you, you know."

" _She? She_ who? Who knew me?" Sarah suddenly felt more awkward than she had in the previous moments.

"My partner. Hannah Traylor."

"Hannah? Hannah was your...Oh, my God, Hannah Traylor is dead?" Luckily, Sarah managed to keep her voice low. But she felt like the plane had hit violent turbulence.

Bryce answered hesitantly. "She never knew you were...the agent who saved me, but she told me...some things about her time at the Farm, and about her...roommate there. What she told me helped me to figure out who you were. But...I never mentioned that to Hannah. I didn't want her...Well, I never mentioned it to her."

Sarah was too stunned to speak. Hannah was dead? Sarah had never liked Hannah, sure; that was an understatement. But she was shocked and saddened to hear that she had died. And, on top of that, to find out that she had been the agent involved with Bryce. Sarah could not sort out her swirling responses to it all.

Bryce seemed to have expected the news to have something like that effect. He grew quiet and gave Sarah some time to process what he had told her.

She turned and looked out the window. Hannah and Bryce - and Hannah dead. Sarah had just been telling Bryce that nothing would happen between them, and now she was jealous, a tad jealous, of a dead woman. That made no sense. She was going to have to watch herself around Bryce. She had been lonely for a long time. But that did not matter: It was the cost of the job.

The job. The damned, damned job. Why was she still doing it? Her father was out, had been safe, according to Graham, for a while. That was not hanging over her head anymore. She had put money aside in a special account that she could use if - no, when - her dad ran afoul of the law again. She had never re-established contact with him, but she could not stand the thought of him imprisoned again. But she had money, quite a lot of it ( _Graham has been generous with my pay_ ), beyond the legal fund for her dad. She could get off the plane and disappear. Let Sarah Walker vanish into thin air much as she had materialized out of thin air. Sarah Walker was not of the earth, earthy. She was a structure of air, airy. She could just let Sarah Walker go and become a new creature, remake herself.

But into what? For what purpose? How would she live? The things she had done could not be undone. She could change her name but her history could only be added to or denied; it could not be changed. She had done as she was told, true. But still, _she had done_ as she was told. She could not simply slough all responsibility off onto Graham. She had never questioned an order, never asked for an explanation.

Her father was free; she was still a prisoner, and in a prison that she had not chosen but had nonetheless helped to build, its cornerstone what she had done in Paris, her Red Test. And all the red, the all-day permanent red, after that, had served as mortar. _Mortar. Mortal._ She was a spy, a trained and ( _God, help me!_ ) a successful assassin. She could walk away and ply those skills freelance, for money. A growth industry. But that would be worse. At least now she could hope that Graham was using her, had used her, for good.

The job. The damned job. She was damned to it. No escape. No excuses. _No exit_.

She was dragging her past behind her like a deadly snake.

 _The Conqueror Worm_. Poe. She had read that poem at Gale's insistence in high school; it had been in one of Gale's omnipresent poetry books. Some of its lines returned to her, chilling, unbidden and unwelcome.

 _Mere puppets they, who come and go_  
 _At bidding of vast formless things_  
 _That shift the scenery to and fro,_  
 _Flapping from out their Condor wings_  
 _Invisible Woe!_

Sarah roused herself from her brown study to find Bryce studying her. She wished he were easier to read. She was glad he was not easier to read. She felt an involuntary flush of warmth against her chill and found it both unwelcome and welcome.

Arrival, Moscow.

ooOoo

Sarah tried to put Hannah out of her head. She could not seem to create forgetfulness of Hannah's death; that stayed with her and she had trouble shaking it for days. But she did manage to create forgetfulness of the fact that Bryce had been with Hannah. She managed not to wonder about what that might reveal about Bryce.

Bryce had been as good as his word. Although they slept in the same bed, he never touched her, never insinuated anything, never made a suggestive remark. Nonetheless, Sarah could tell that he was...waiting. He seemed to expect them to happen, despite Sarah's efforts to maintain distance. He gave her privacy and used the privacy she gave him. Nothing happened, and nothing kept happening, and they both were aware that nothing was happening. The nothing kept happening, and they kept being aware of it. Nothing was happening; something was bound to happen. Sarah fought against it, trying to keep the cap on the cavern of her loneliness, trying to ignore her increasing attraction to Bryce.

ooOoo

Four weeks later, Sarah had settled into her role as cover wife. She had gotten to know Martha Orlov, and she had turned out to be both attractive and vapid. It was clear that her husband was not hiding who he was from her. She had simply never thought about it or noticed any indications. She accepted that he was "an importer/exporter" and reveled in the living that his business created without any interest in it whatsoever.

Unfortunately for Sarah, Martha had noticed Bryce, and although she seemed to have nothing more than idle admiration for him, she peppered Sarah with questions about the two of them - and about the details of their intimate lives.

As usual, Sarah had found talking that way easy when she was doing so as part of the cover, but as soon as the conversations ended, and even though none deserved more than an R-rating, Sarah found herself embarrassed and anxious. Talking as if she was doing something when she was doing nothing - and all-too-aware that she was doing nothing - was causing her to become more and more conscious of and responsive to Bryce in the apartment, in the bedroom, in the bed.

Bryce had managed to steal a couple of bits of information from Orlov's office without being seen, even though the risk had been enormous, since he had done it by walking in and out in broad daylight, trusting that he could do it quickly enough that no one would notice. (The chance had been too good to pass up.) Orlov had been in a meeting and his assistant had been in the restroom. Bryce had not found what they really wanted to know, where the largest caches of weapons were and whether there were nukes among them, but what he found were the locations of two small Moscow caches of automatic weapons and ammunition, earmarked for terrorist groups.

So, for the next few days, while Bryce worked at Orlov's offices and with Orlov's other lieutenants on the streets, ensuring Orlovs' interests, Sarah used her comparative freedom to scout out the locations and to plan a way of stealing the caches.

Graham gave them the help of two men stationed in Moscow, and, with Sarah's skills, they were able to get in, load the weapons and get away with both caches. It had been a remarkable success. She and Bryce had worked together in unison and harmony. His information had been accurate, her planning flawless. They had gotten in and gotten out in complete silence, without leaving a trace. After securing the weapons in a new location, they had gone back to their apartment, both in high spirits.

When they got inside, Bryce grabbed Sarah and pulled her to him, lifted her, in victory, in excitement. There was nothing suggestive about his action; it was friendly and celebratory. But as she laughed and as he started to put her feet back on the ground, their eyes had met. For a moment, everything between them hung in the balance. And then Sarah extricated herself from the hug and went to change, to shower. She heard Bryce sigh, but not because he had tried to get her to hear. She sighed internally. _Bad idea. Bad idea._

She was repeating that to herself still, like a litany, as she emerged from the bathroom later, wrapped in a robe, her wet hair wound in a towel. When she stepped into the bedroom, Bryce was standing there. He was fully clothed. He still had on his shoes. But his eyes were smoldering and he made no attempt to hide that or to look away.

Sarah blushed head to toe, hot all over, feeling as if she could no longer regulate her body temperature. It had been so long. Still chanting _Bad idea, Bad idea_ , she moved slowly toward him. He reached out and put his hand on the knotted belt of her robe. She looked into his eyes, then down at his hand, then back into his eyes, making her response clear. He unknotted the belt, and Sarah drew her shoulders up and in, so that the robe fell to her feet. Without yet looking at her naked body, Bryce reached up and unwound the towel from her hair, and it fell damply around her face. He took her hand and stepped away one step, his gaze now taking her in, all of her in. She stood naked before a man for the first time in her life. Smiling, he stepped back to her and took her in his arms, kissing her. Her hands were on his shoulders, then they moved to his chest and she started to unbutton his shirt.

ooOoo

It had not gone as well as Sarah had hoped. She blamed herself. It all felt new and strange. She realized that her previous encounters with men had not only been clothed or partially clothed encounters, but that the clothes had been an outward and visible sign of her inward state. She had slept with those men _undercover_ , as someone other than herself, or as no one in particular. That was one complicating factor. Another was that this was the first time she had wanted _the man_ she had sex with, and not just _the sex_ she had with the man. That changed so much about what was happening, what happened, and she was unsure how to cope with it. That was another complicating factor. And it had been so long and she had been so lonely, aching so for companionship. The final complicating factor.

When they finished, she had felt awkward, clumsy and naive. In her embarrassment, she rolled away from Bryce. If there had been anywhere for her to go, she would have gotten up and left. Bryce did not follow her across the bed. He said nothing to her; left her alone. When she finally summoned up the will to roll back over, toward him, she found him asleep, snoring gently. She looked at him, trying to come to terms with what she had allowed to happen. Eventually, she rolled away again and went to sleep.

The next morning, Bryce woke her, his hand trailing up the back of her leg, across her backside and stopping, warm, almost hot, in the small of her back. She rolled toward him. It went better this time. When they finished, Sarah still felt like she should get up, out of bed. She did - and Bryce did not protest. She threw on one of her t-shirts and some underwear and went to make breakfast.

 _Bad idea. Bad idea. Bad idea. Stop it. It's done._ But Sarah felt lighter, and the morning sun looked brighter, than she had, than it had, in a long, lone time. _Maybe not a bad idea._

ooOoo

Orlov went berserk when he discovered the loss of his weapons. Luckily, he blamed a rival and no blame fell on anyone in his group, particularly not Bryce. But Orlov tightened everything up, becoming almost obsessively vigilant. Given his history, this would not last; eventually, things would relax again. But that meant that Bryce and Sarah's mission went into a holding pattern. They needed Orlov to relax again, and in particular, they needed him to take Bryce into his confidence. But it would be a while before he took anyone into his confidence. Sarah set out to help with that by trying to become irreplaceable to Martha. It had worked. Martha wanted Sarah to spend time with her almost every day.

Still, Martha set Sarah's teeth on edge. She was a low candlepower version of Amy, far less entertaining and far needier, as hard as both were to imagine. But as trying as her days were, Sarah looked forward to her nights. She and Bryce had begun a real relationship; the domesticity inside their apartment was not feigned, it was real. Sarah began to get intimations of the future, of a life that might be available to her, and that she might want, outside of the spy life. She was not making marriage plans or anything like that. Far from it. But she was thinking in terms of 'we', 'us'. She did not think of them as the Andersons, but as _Bryce and Sarah_.

She had finally relaxed when she was with him, had come to enjoy his gaze, her new degree of exposure and vulnerability. A month after the first time they slept together, Sarah bought a small cake at her favorite nearby bakery to celebrate. Bryce enjoyed the cake after their meal, but seemed not to recognize its significance. Sarah had hoped he would remember the occasion. If he did, he never let on. She let it go and went to the bathroom to put on something special. That had its desired effect.

Spent, after it had gone well, as it now usually did, she did not roll away. She rolled toward him, against him, and gently caressed his chest with her hand. She looked up into his eyes. He had told her nothing more about himself since dinner in DC. She had not told him anything at all. _Not yet_. But she felt like maybe she could, maybe, one day, she would.

For now, she just wanted him to know how special this was, how important this occasion, this anniversary of sorts, was to her. Holding his gaze, she whispered, "Bryce, this... _us_...it's...um...it's great."

She dropped her head onto his chest, appalled by predictably saying so badly something she so badly wanted to say.

Bryce chuckled. She looked up. He smiled his high-wattage smile. "It's ok. I know you have a hard time saying things. It's great for me too, _Mrs. Anderson_." He winked at her.

Sarah closed her eyes and rolled away.

ooOoo

Sarah opened the glass door of the bakery, the door and the front windows steamed over by the intersection of frigid cold Moscow and oven-warm bakery. She walked to the display case and greeted the baker. They had become friendly. He chose one of what he said were the best of the day's items and bagged it for her. She turned to leave, then noticed a man in a wool cap seated in one corner. He was reading the paper, but let half of it dip down so that she could see his face. It was Donald Melden, her handler from Leipzig. She had not seen him since then.

She looked around; no one seemed to be paying attention. She started toward him, but his eyes warned her off. He lifted the paper enough to allow her to see a file on the table. Then he folded the paper, slipping the file inside surreptitiously. He got up. As he went by she heard him, his voice was nearly inaudible. "I'm sorry, Sarah Walker; good luck." He went out the steamy door.

She walked to the table and picked up the paper, putting it under her arm. After waiting a minute or so, she went outside. Donald was gone. She walked to a bench up the street and sat down, opening the paper. The file was sealed. It had her name on it. There was a note written on the outside.

 _I kept these documents when I was supposed to destroy them. I don't know if giving them to you is the right thing or the wrong thing to do. By now, you must suspect that Graham has been manipulating you. But I wonder if you understand the whole situation. These documents will make it clear. You will have to decide if you want to know. Ignorance and knowledge are both dangerous things._

 _I quit the Company. This is my final act as a spy, one I am doing for myself. I hope to find your dad sometime soon and have a drink with him. I'd enjoy seeing Jack Burton again. But don't worry, your secrets are safe with me. Langston's, well, not so much._

 _-Donald_

Sarah walked back to the apartment in a buzzing confusion, the file back inside the newspaper. Bryce was not there. She took the file and hid it.

She went to her suitcase and dug out the burner phone inside it. She called Carina. She needed to talk to someone.

* * *

 **A/N2** Yes, well…

Tune in next time for Chapter 15, "Not Nothing, Not Something (Part Three): Fellow Travelers".


	15. Not Nothing (Three)

**A/N1** More of the Sarah and Bryce Moscow mission. A file and a friend. A voyage on Sarah's stream of consciousness. Dancing and swimming and a barn.

Thanks for reading and reviewing.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

 _Not Nothing, Not Something (Part Three)_ :

 _Fellow Travelers_

* * *

Kingdom calling: don't you want to come and hide, all the  
way to the other side? Your turn falling, didn't land at  
all and, some would say, was never gone. Can't you stand  
to reason with the hours? Something stopped you, but  
the lanes they changed as you pulled away. Come-to (played-  
out) with all the hooks to hang aground, swinging through.  
("Cut me down!")  
\- Richard Buckner, _Kingdom_

* * *

The phone rang. Sarah tapped her foot. She did not want to leave Carina a message; she wouldn't leave a message. But then Carina answered.

"Headstone! How're tricks?"

In Sarah's altered state, the nickname went right through her. "I wish you wouldn't call me that."

Pause. She heard Carina breathe out. "I wish I didn't need to."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Another pause. "Someone needs to remind you of what you do, Sarah."

"You think I don't know?"

Yet another pause. Breath. "No, you don't let yourself acknowledge it. But one day…"

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut. She did not want to have this conversation. She did not want to have the one she called to have, but she especially did not want to have this one.

"This is sort of about what I do."

"Oh? What do you mean, Sarah?"

"Do you know, or know of, a CIA agent named Donald Melden?"

Sarah could hear Carina thinking. "Um...No. I don't _know_ him. But I do know _of_ him. Long-time agent. Some kind of old 'war buddy' of Langston Graham's, recruits together, first posting together, _yadda yadda_.

"They were once as thick as thieves, or so I have heard. Graham is supposed to have pushed him aside. Another agent, a poster boy named...Larkin...yeah, _Larkin_...stepped up, stepped in. I don't have to tell _you_ that Graham plays favorites…"

Now, Sarah paused, reticent. Then she made herself go on. "Melden was my handler on my first mission. He was...kind to me." Sarah decided not to say more. "Anyway, he showed up in Moscow today…"

"Moscow. _Brrr_. Is that where you are?"

"Yes, you?"

"Paris."

Sarah blanched. Keep her voice even, she responded. "I am here on a mission. With another agent."

"Really? Graham let you team up again?" Carina sounded more than a little surprised.

"Yes. I'm here...with Larkin, Bryce Larkin."

Carina huffed. "Wow. Speak of the devil…"

Sarah bit her words. "What's that mean? Do you know Bryce?"

"' _Bryce'_? No, I don't know... _Bryce_. Saw him once across a room at some DC shindig. Pretty. At least at a distance."

"Yeah," Sarah said, and only noticed her quick shift into a slightly dreamy tone after it was too late.

"Sarah! Are you and Larkin playing X-rated _I Spy_? I spy something _pink_ …"

Carina!" But Sarah realized it was too late. Carina knew. Sarah lowered her voice. "Yes, we're... _together_."

Carina started to say something, then stopped. There was silence on her end for a moment, then she went on. "I take it you didn't call to _girl-chat_. So what's the story with Melden?"

Sarah was slightly disappointed. She had expected confirmation that she was together with Bryce to elicit at least an attempt at gathering details. Not that Sarah would have given any - but it would have been...fun...to be asked. Normal. She forced herself to focus and move past the disappointment. She had called about Melden, not Bryce.

"He left me a sealed file. He indicated that it contains information on Graham and on...me. I guess, specifically, on Graham's recruitment and subsequent...management...of me. But Melden told me he was not sure that it was a good idea for me to know, that I would have to decide."

Sarah had spooled out her words, and she stopped, rewound and continued."He said that ignorance and knowledge were both dangerous. I called to see what you thought."

Carina made a humming-thinking sound. "He's right - you know, about ignorance and knowledge. Isn't that the point of that Garden story, Eden? Knowledge got them in trouble, but would they have even been human if they'd stayed ignorant, even been free? But then again, I guess I never really understood that story…"

Carina, like always, was full of surprises, but Sarah let the reference pass. "What would you do, Carina?"

"Ignorance - or maybe better, ignoring things - got me into this life, Sarah. I say open the file. Eat the apple to the core. Meet your maker, if that's what he is."

"Eldon Tyrell..." Sarah said the name softly.

"Huh? - Oh, wait, that's _Blade Runner._ I mentioned that movie to you, didn't I? But you acted like you hadn't seen it."

"I hadn't. Not then. It turns out Bryce has a stack of Bond films here _and_ a stack of sci-fi films. I was alone one afternoon and saw the title in the sci-fi stack. I remembered you mentioning it; I decided to watch it."

"Huh. Right, Tyrell. Yeah. Come to think of it, there is a scary resemblance between Langley and Tyrell Corp, spiritually, if not architecturally. Anyway, if I were you, I would look. How can you ever have a life that's yours if someone else's hands are on the wheel?"

Sarah thought of her Porsche. She missed her car. But she knew that Carina was right. The more she thought about it, the more she knew she would not be able to resist looking, even if she did not want to look. And part of her did not want to look.

"You're right. I'm going to open the file."

Carina hummed her agreement. "Good. Tell you what. I am actually between missions, taking some time off. But I am tired of baguettes. And, big shock, I have a few frequent flyer miles I could use. How about I come up there for a few days? You could pass me off as an old friend. Not a stretch. Just make sure... _Bryce_...will play along. Okay?"

"That would be good. Yes. I will work it out with Bryce. I am going to look in the file, but I am not sure I am going to tell Bryce about it, so say nothing unless I give you the green light."

" _Mum_ 's the word. See you in a couple of days. Give me the address and some details of the cover. Who knows, maybe I can help..."

ooOoo

Sarah sat down on the bed. Bryce was still gone. He would not likely be home until later in the day. He was to have a meeting with Orlov, but all indications were that it would be routine. Still, Orlov did seem to be showing some favor to Bryce, and Sarah's ingratiating herself with Martha seemed to be helping.

They had dinner at the Orlov estate a couple of times. Maybe something would break their way soon. Sarah would worry about all that again later. She was going to open the file that Donald had given her.

She pulled a knife from the holster of blades resting beside her on the bed, the one she normally wore around her calf when she went out. She sliced open the file. Inside were various documents and official papers, as well as several sheets of paper full of text, all typed by Donald, an attempt to stitch together the other items in the file. She was surprised when a key fell onto the bed from inside the file. It was a key to a locker at a Moscow train station. It had a small piece of paper taped to it, with the location and locker number. Sarah picked up the key and put it in her pocket.

She began to look through the papers and then to read what Donald had written.

ooOoo

The story Donald had recreated for her began with his meeting her father. Afterward, he had told Graham about her. Graham had been intrigued. At that point, Graham began keeping track of them as best he could. Each time Sarah - Jenny - enrolled at a new school, Graham seemed to know. He kept track of her academic record and, as well as he could, of the record of the cons she and her father had been involved in.

Although Jenny - Sarah's - father had instigated the con that put everything in motion, his jail time, her CIA recruitment, Donald thought it was possible that it was Graham who had revealed the con to the mark and had thus put her father in danger, put her on the path to the Farm. Donald had no proof of that. But Donald knew that Graham had orchestrated Sarah's time at the Farm.

Unbeknownst to Sarah, Graham had recruits spying on her, most importantly, Hannah Traylor. It had been Hannah who passed the word around that Sarah was Graham's 'pet'. She had done it on orders from Graham because Graham had wanted to ensure that Sarah remained alone. Graham had also cooked the books, the grade books, against her friend, James, and engineered his dismissal from the Farm. He had done that for the same reason.

In effect, Graham had been Sarah's handler from almost the beginning. His phone calls, his recalls to Langley, all were part of his manipulation of her, his attempt to keep her at the very unnatural task he had given her. Graham wanted a killer under control, not a monster unleashed, and so Graham had worked carefully to push her, to keep her busy so that she would not have time to reflect on what she was doing, wonder about her orders. At the same time, though, he had tried to pace her, to break up the wetwork, to keep her from slipping into the all-too-likely derangement extended work of that sort normally caused. Donald had tried to help her by pushing on Graham to ease up on her.

Donald had been her first handler as a way of extending Graham's influence; he had been serving _in loco 'parentis'._ Sarah was shocked to find out that Donald had himself later been spying on her as part of the evaluation procedures initiated by Graham.

 _Some spy I am! Never considering that the spies might spy on their spy. So focused on the supposed bad guys I never suspected the supposed good guys. Not enough, anyway._

Donald's story ended before Sarah had been partnered with Bryce. But Sarah wondered if the story extended to that partnership. Almost certainly it did: Graham had partnered her with Bryce to try to keep her from going over the edge. _I was close. Donald wasn't wrong._ What she did not know was whether Graham had intended that she and Bryce be _together_.

That thought brought it all crashing down on Sarah, like Langley itself fell on her head.

Her mind began to race, her thoughts coming in no particular order, jumbled.

Graham had been her handler all along.

The mention of _Blade Runner,_ of replicants and of Tyrell, - it all seemed bleakly and sickly _apropos_. Sarah had been created by Graham, not from nothing, of course, but from very little. Graham had commandeered her, what little there was of her after her twisty, stunted childhood, after the education her father had given her ( _I was no-home schooled)_ , and Graham had taken that education to new heights... _depths._

And now here she was, a consummate professional assassin and a rank amateur human being. _Emphasis on 'rank'._

She was in the first real romantic relationship of her life, and she was now suspicious that it was not really real. Maybe Graham had intended that she and Bryce be together. Maybe Graham and Bryce had planned it. Bryce had said that Graham told him what to expect. Maybe that meant something different than Sarah had understood it to mean. Maybe.

What she had with Bryce was not all she hoped for ( _not yet?_ ), but she had been happy during the past weeks, or as close to it as she could ever remember being. No, they were not as close as she wanted them to be, but she thought that was her fault. She had still had not opened up to him, not told him anything at all. True, he did not ask, did not encourage her. But she reckoned it was her fault. _Ice Queen. Thanks, Hannah. Sorry, Hannah. Damn you, Hannah._ But it would have been nice to be asked, encouraged despite the difficulty of answering, responding.

And he hurt her. Fairly often. Not intentionally, deliberately, on purpose. But he did. He called the two of them the Andersons. He never noticed that she did not, except on-mission. When he was in the apartment, it often seemed more like headquarters than home. She wanted it to feel like home.

All she knew for sure was that she had no idea how a relationship worked and whether she was doing any of it right. She really had no idea what a home was. On a mission, they were good, great sometimes, synchronized. In bed, they were good. Bryce was attentive to her on a mission, in bed. But the in-between times were tricky, the times when she wanted to be Sarah and Bryce. He made little effort there. Bryce seemed to get them as the Andersons, but not as Sarah and Bryce, not as together in-between. She was sure he was fond of her. But she was also sure he had not thought about them together in the future, about having a future with her. She barely knew how to think about a future, and the possibility of it taxed her imagination, but she was trying.

Had Graham set this up, set them up? Had she been seduced, the seduction taken beyond official Company policy ( _copulation added to manipulation?_ ), had she been played?

-No. She hadn't. Maybe Graham had foreseen the possibility of her and Bryce getting together, hoped for it, but she had chosen it and she knew that Bryce was fond of her. She was fond of him...maybe 'fond' was too weak a word. Maybe. What she had with Bryce was real, she felt sure - but a real _what?_ Did being _together_ make them a couple? Did he want to be a couple? What did he want? She did not know that he had rejected the thought of a future with her, she suspected he had simply never considered it.

But where did that leave her, given what she now knew about her life? She had no answer.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on one of them.

The scatter of papers on the bed around her were like the scattered pieces of herself and her life. She was not just a liar, Graham's liar; she was Graham's lie. An embodied falsehood. The nullification of a real person.

 _All the lies that are my life._

She had expected to be angry, specifically to be angry at Graham. And she was. Angry. Deep down, down deep somewhere, she was angry. Seething. Down deep.

But that anger did not now grip her. It might come to do so. She did not know what would happen when she next talked to Graham, saw him. But right now she was too weary of it all to feel angry, too queasy to see red. Bone weary. Sick. Sick to death of death. Sick to death of lies, of her life.

She should quit. Walk. Get out.

But she had seen no exit strategy before and she saw none now. Even more, she wanted this thing, this _together_ thing, with Bryce to work. But she had no idea if he would ever be willing to leave the CIA, to leave spying. To live another life.

The more she thought about it, the less she thought he would. He had chosen this life. He wanted it. He loved it; he obviously loved it. Yes, he regretted what had happened to Hannah, but that had not soured him on the job. It was a risk the job required, a payment that could be exacted.

As long as she was with Bryce, she was going to be in the spy life.

But beyond Bryce, she still had no real conception of life outside of spying might look like, look like for her. She had fleeting thoughts now, dream-reveries, of a home...of children. They were hazy, ill-defined, nebulous. They had not risen to the level of wishes, much less of plans - but they returned to her occasionally. Lightning flashes across the cloudy sky of her inner landscape.

She had a hard time imagining _herself_ in those nebulous scenes. _Assassin wife? Assassin mom? How would that work?_ Even if she quit, she would always be who she had been. The life had focused her on the wrong things, hardened her, adrenalized her. She could do things no one should do and that most people could not do. If she quit the job, she would have time to recollect it. Each new mission overshadowed the old, but with no new mission, the old missions would come into the light, be visible, surveyable. Her past would creep into her present. How could she be a wife, a mother, with all that baggage? ( _Could I transition from wetwork to breastfeeding?_ _Lord, Sarah, what a question._ ) She was not sure she was managing to be a girlfriend, encumbered with baggage as she was. What she had with Bryce _right now_ was all she deserved, more than she had any right to hope for.

And it seemed to be all he wanted. As hard as it was to imagine herself into scenes as a wife and mother, she found it harder to imagine Bryce into them as husband and father. He just did not fit into the dream at all, wispy and vague though it was.

 _Probably because he so obviously does not share it._

Sarah sighed and wiped at her eyes, paying her tears no mind.

Perhaps she could stay in the CIA but give up the role of Graham's Enforcer?

Her father was a free man. Graham could not force her to keep doing that particular job, keep submersing her in wetwork. Or could he?

He could now separate her and Bryce, reassign one or both of them. She did not know if Graham knew they were together, but if he did, then he had a new instrument of pressure he could bring to bear.

She was still, in effect, trapped. Graham had positioned his pieces on the board with great skill and deliberation, and he had a massive advantage: until today, Sarah had never been sure he was playing _against_ her.

He controlled the board. She could rail against the lie he had fashioned of her, the lie of her life, but it was all the life she had, the only life she knew, and she now had a reason - Bryce - to stay in it beyond her fear of leaving it.

She gathered the scattered papers, put them back in the file, and then hid it again. She heard the door to the apartment unlock.

Bryce was home.

 _Home?_

ooOoo

Two days later, Carina arrived. Of course, since it was Carina, 'arrived' was too weak. 'Made landfall' - she hurricaned into town.

Carina knocked on the apartment door and Bryce opened it. She blew in, suitcase in her wake, striding to Sarah, who was standing in the middle of the room, and taking her into an immediate hug. Her suitcase, overbalanced and forgotten, fell onto the floor.

"Sarah! I'm here! Good to see you." She pushed Sarah back to arm's length and looked at her. "Hmmm. Cheeks rosy, posture even better than usual, a certain fluidity in the hips. You look like a woman who is having regular sexual intercourse." Sarah blushed and Carina beamed at Sarah, but only for a second: Carina whirled to take in Bryce's reaction. He was staring at the two of them. Sarah had told him about Carina but she knew that there was no preparing him for the in-flesh confrontation.

"Ah, the reason for the fluidity. Bryce, right? I'm Carina." She put out a hand and Bryce shook it, looking a question past Carina to Sarah. She shrugged at him.

"Um, yes, I'm Larkin, Bryce Larkin. I'm Sarah's...partner."

Even from behind, Sarah could see Carina stiffen slightly at the word, especially after her greeting. She turned back to Sarah and smiled, but under a slightly raised eyebrow. Sarah looked away.

"C'mon, Carina. Let me show you where to put your bag." They stowed Carina's bag and then returned to the living room. Bryce had gotten out some beers and a bottle of wine. Carina took a beer when he offered it, as did Sarah, and they two of them sat down on the couch. Bryce settled into an armchair opposite them, a beer of his own in hand.

"So, Bryce, I hope you don't mind me crashing the mission, so to speak. But I wanted to see my friend and had some time off."

Bryce shook his head. "No, I don't mind. I was a little surprised when Sarah told me you were coming since she hadn't mentioned you before. But I think your arrival actually helps us. I had a meeting with Orlov the other day - I assume Sarah mentioned him to you? Good. - and he invited me to go on a trip with him. He wouldn't tell me where we were going, but he seemed to regard the invitation as a big deal.

"In fact, I am leaving tonight. If my guess is right, he is going to take me into his confidence, maybe even take me to his major cache of weapons. He wanted Sarah to spend the days I was away with his wife, but having you in town allowed Sarah to successfully beg off, so she could spend time with you." Carina turned to Sarah and she nodded.

"That's good because I want to be able, if I can, to relay information to Sarah while I am gone; I may need to do so immediately if Orlov is planning on moving or selling his cache. Now I can do that. It would have been much harder if she were at Orlov's house with Martha. And if Sarah needs you, you will be here."

Carina pursed her lips. "Couldn't you relay information right to the CIA station in Moscow?"

"No, not easily. Orlov will not only permit, but he will also encourage me to keep in contact with my...wife. But he would be suspicious of other calls, and I do not want to carry any communication device but my phone, and I want my history on it to show only calls to Sarah."

Carina nodded. She could see the merits of Bryce's approach. "Ok, well, I'll keep Sarah company."

They sat and chatted for a while. Eventually, Bryce left the living room, gathered his things, and headed out for his trip with Orlov.

ooOoo

Carina put down her beer (her third) and sighed. "Shit." Sarah had given her a summary of what the file, what Donald, had told her.

Sarah had left things out, like the exact circumstances of her recruitment and her age at the time. She had left out any specifics about her dad. But, except for certain details like those, she told Carina the story.

"I told you Graham was a son-of-a-bitch. So are you going to go all _Batty_ on him - Roy Batty? He deserves whatever you decide to dish out, Sarah. He's taken _patronizing_ to a whole new, infernal level."

Sarah blew out a breath. "I don't know. I don't know what I will do. This is the only life I know. I...want to see where this...thing...with Bryce is going to go."

"Your _partner_ Bryce, right?"

Sarah winced at the word.

"He didn't mean anything by that, Carina. Besides, isn't that what you would want him to say if it was you?"

Carina gave Sarah a speculative glance. "Well, I grant he didn't mean much by that. And it isn't me, it's you. Is that what you want him to say?"

Sarah stared at the ground. "No, but I don't know what other word he should have used. 'Partner' is right, as far as it goes."

"Yeah, but it doesn't go as far as you go, does it?"

"No."

"Do you think he has any interest in staying...partners?"

Sarah was at a loss. "I don't know. He doesn't seem to be actively planning it."

"Sarah, you need to figure it out. Is 'partners' a mission-relative term for him, or a life-relative term, if you see what I mean."

"I do. But I am not sure about myself. I don't want it to be mission-relative, but I'm not sure I know to mean it any other way."

"Are you _sure_ you really want it to be more than mission-relative?" When Sarah started to protest, Carina sped up. "I don't mean that you are where you fear Bryce may be, but I do wonder…"

"Wonder what?"

"This is quick, Sarah. A few weeks, a couple of months, and here you are. Look, I've seen the hoarfrost form on the Ice Queen," at Sarah's reaction to that, Carina smirked, "Sorry, couldn't resist that phrase, it's been in my head for a while - but I've seen how lonely you are...have been...and I worry that your reaction is...premature." Another smirk, but at the last word, not at Sarah or her predicament. There was sympathy, guarded but present, in Carina's look.

Sarah stared at the ground again. This had crossed her mind. Since reading the file, she had been reviewing her past missions, and she had thought in particular about Sebastian and Christiana, back at the beginning. About her later reactions to Amy, Zondra, Carina.

She had let her loneliness affect her on those missions, her exhaustion and desperation, her need to connect. In all those instances, she had been hurt, hurt by Zondra worst of all. ( _That wound doesn't heal._ ) She had let down her defenses and it had cost her.

"I guess that's fair. I don't know. I mean I did try to resist him. It's not like we met and immediately tumbled into bed."

Carina grinned and narrowed her eyes a bit. "No, I suspect not. _The Immediate Tumble_ is more my move than yours, I am pretty sure. Part of my floor routine, you know. But I can dismount... _ahem!_...without feelings, Headstone."

Sarah blinked at the return of her title, but she understood Carina's use of it better now. The title was in part a call to her, a call to her to consider herself, a call to self-knowledge.

"Well, you've got a lot to think about and I have the prescription. _The usual_. Drinks and dancing. Let's get dressed and go out." Carina stood up and swayed, danced a step or two.

"Okay," Sarah agreed, a small smile playing on her lips at Carina's tipsy antics, "but we need to go somewhere sort of... _tame_. I don't need word getting back to Martha, and so to Dobry, that I was out carousing when my husband was away."

Carina started to laugh but then did not. "And you wouldn't want to give your husband the wrong idea, would you?"

Sarah was silent. Carina shook her head. "Oh, Headstone. Spies don't fall in love. Not even with other spies."

ooOoo

The next morning, Sarah stumbled tiredly into the kitchen. Carina was snoring, rather loudly, on the living room couch. Sarah smirked at the sound; if she had a recorder handy, she would have recorded it. Laughing to herself, she started making coffee.

The night with Carina had clarified some things for Sarah, although they had really only made small talk at the club. Mostly, they danced. The movement itself seemed to help Sarah, freeing her from the toils of her worries and frustrations. She decided she would figure out what to do about Graham the next time she saw him. Until then, she would go on as she had. It helped that Graham had not been in touch with her since she had been with Bryce. She had called him once. She knew Bryce had talked to him a couple of times, but on the whole, she had been given a break from the years of almost constant attention from him.

She was also going to let whatever was happening between her and Bryce take its course. She was not going to be able to see their future, or if they had one. She would just have to wait and find out. The truth was, she did not know him very well and he had not done much to make himself known. She had not done much to make herself known either, as she knew. If they were going to be anything more than mission partners, that was going to have to change.

She walked into the living room carrying a cup of coffee. Carina was partially awake, no longer snoring. She groggily took the cup from Sarah's hands and sipped from it. She sighed then she gave Sarah an apologetic look.

"What?"

"After you told me about Bryce, I...I checked up on him. Called some old friends in DC, intelligence-community folks. Everyone agrees he's a good spy." Sarah felt like more was coming, so she waited. Everyone also agrees that he...well, he gets around." Sarah felt a tightness in her throat. "Word is that he often _partners_ with his partners."

Sarah felt a defensive anger. "I'm surprised, Carina, that _you_ would judge…"

Carina actually blushed. "No, Sarah, no. I'm telling you, not judging. I saw him look at you last night when he left. I believe he does have feelings for you. But…"

"But what?"

"Nothing. Nothing. I just felt like I had to tell you. I'm sorry if I pissed you off. As Melden said, ignorance and knowledge are both dangerous. I wasn't sure I should say anything."

"I knew, Carina. He was with his last partner. He told me - or, I guess, I figured it out. My eyes are open."

"Okay, discussion closed."

ooOoo

Bryce called later that day, in the early afternoon. It turned out that Orlov had taken him for some male bonding, not to disclose the location of the cache of weapons. Bryce sounded strange on the phone, muffled. It turned out that the form of the male bonding was a dawn ice swim in a remote lake far west of the city. Bryce's head was stuffy.

Sarah could almost hear Bryce's teeth still chattering. But evidently, his ice swim had impressed Orlov, because Orlov insisted that they drink together afterward in a small lake hut near the hole they had used for swimming. Orlov had gotten woefully drunk, and at one point he mentioned a farm in the countryside that he had been raised on as a boy. Bryce, his instincts immediately kicking in, encouraged Orlove to tell him about it. No mention of a farm was in any of the information on Orlove Bryce had. No checks on Orlov had turned it up; the existence of it was news.

Orlov, it turned out, had been an orphan, and the family there had taken him in but never officially adopted him. When the elderly couple died, Orlov had purchased the farm for sentimental reasons, but had done it through a series of dummy corporations. While Orlov told the tale to Bryce, he said enough that Bryce was sure of the general location of the farm. He told Sarah the information and asked her to get it to the analysts at Langley. Maybe it would be enough to get an actual physical address. It was just the sort of place at which Orlov would hide weapons, family man that he was. Bryce and Orlov were due to get back to Moscow late that night or in the early hours of the next morning.

Sarah fed the information to a team of analysts at Langley. She had been able to contact them directly with a number Bryce gave her, and so had not had to go through Graham. An hour later, she had a probable address. She and Carina got ready, took a quick bus to a car rental agency, and were soon on their way out of the city, north and east, toward the town of Staraya Kupavna, although the farm was still farther north and east than the town.

The drive was a little more than two hours through the frozen landscape. Dark shadows were crawling across the white snow when they got close to the farm. They drove by it. It was set back from the narrow, uneven road, and difficult to tell much about. The main house was small, but there was an outsized barn nearby. Sarah and Carina noticed at the same time that the gravel road back to the farmhouse was deeply rutted by dual wheels. Heavy trucks had gone in and out. It was possible it was farm related but they both thought otherwise.

Sarah found a place to pull off the road not too far from the farm, and they left the car there. It was dusk. The mission was reconnoiter, but they both had pistols. Sarah had her knives and a flashlight. If they were lucky, they could get to the farm, check it out, and get back to the car without being seen. There was a team ready to roll from Moscow if Bryce's instincts turned out to be right.

The wind was as cold as any Sarah had ever felt. She could see her breath and Carina's too, as they hurried, hunched over, toward the farmhouse, staying as close as they could to the treeline. The darkness was their primary concealment, however, since the trees were largely bare, twisted and stunted by a lifetime of standing in an artic-like blast.

The treeline took them first near the farmhouse. They approached from the side. They were no cars visible, no one around. There were what looked like footprints near the barn, but they looked windswept and malformed, like they had been made a while ago and but never buried under a fresh snow. They reached the side of the house, then around to the back.

There was a fence around a narrow piece of ground, a garden evidently, used in the warmer months but now frozen and fallow. Sarah put a hand on the fence and threw her legs over it; Carina imitated the maneuver. Sarah was impressed. Carina could move almost as silently as she could.

The back door was locked but Sarah made short, quiet work of that. Carina had her pistol ready as Sarah opened the door. They stepped through the door into a kitchen. The interior of the house was only marginally warmer than it was outside.

They stood for a moment, listening. No sound but the whir of the wind outside. Sarah re-locked the door, then clicked on her flashlight, careful to keep the beam away from any window. The table had plates on it, dirty plates, but there was no sign that they had been used recently: a day or two had passed at least. They worked carefully in tandem through the rest of the house. The beds had been used and sloppily remade (really, someone had done little more than tug the blankets back almost into place). There were three automatic rifles standing in the corner of one bedroom, and a box of shells, but otherwise nothing of note.

They went outside through the front door and crossed the snow. The footprints were, as Sarah thought, old. It was hard to tell how many people had made them, given the damage of the wind and the low light provided by the sickle moon. The barn door was chained shut and padlocked. Sarah again went to work, but the work was slower this time. Her hands were getting numb and it made her clumsy. But eventually she got the padlock open and she and Carina slid the chain to the side. Carina opened the door this time, with Sarah standing ready. The barn was dark, nearly pitch dark inside. They slipped in and pulled the door closed. Sarah clicked on the flashlight again.

"Goddamn." Carina. There were boxes and boxes of weapons, stacked high in the barn, all different types. Enough to supply an army it seemed. They moved among the stacked boxes, and Carina turned to Sarah: "Shit. It's like that scene at the end of _Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark._ Boxes everywhere."

"I know," Sarah said, then shook her head. "One day you are going to have to tell me who you watched these all these sci-fi movies with."

Carina looked away and Sarah heard her mumble. "You'll have to get me as drunk as Orlov was this morning…"

Sarah worked her way along an aisle between the boxes. At the back of the barn, there was a separate room with a heavy door. Sarah went in, Carina close behind her. "Oh. Oh, no. That is _not_ good."

Orlov did not have nukes, so far as Sarah could tell. She saw nothing to indicate it. But he had chemical weapons - and they were housed in the small room. She grabbed her phone to dial Moscow when she heard the roar and click of a diesel engine heading up the gravel road toward the barn.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for Chapter 16, "Not Nothing, Not Something (Part Four): Ice to Sun".

Just in case the reference threw anyone, Roy Batty was the character played by Rutger Hauer in _Blade Runner._ Roy, a replicant, manages to get inside Tyrell Corp, where he has a conversation with Eldon Tyrell, his maker, before he kills him.

How about a review as you leave?


	16. Not Nothing (Four)

**A/N1** More story.

Thanks for reading and reviewing. Love to hear from you.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 _Not Nothing, Not Something (Part Four):_

 _Ice to Sun_

* * *

Separate the fiction from the fact  
I've been a little slow to react  
But it's nearly time to flick the switch  
And I'm hanging by a single stitch  
Laughing at the stony face of gloom  
When your turn comes round  
And the light goes on  
And you feel your attraction again  
And your instinct can't be wrong  
Feel this come and go  
Where the true present lies, calling down  
Calling down  
Yeah, calling  
Laughing at the stony face of gloom  
When your turn comes round  
And the days get long  
And you feel your attraction to him  
And your instinct can't be wrong  
Calling down  
Calling down  
\- Crowded House, _Instinct_

* * *

"Up!" Carina's hoarse whisper. They clambered up on a box, then on a low stack of boxes, then still up atop an even higher stack. There was enough room on the large box for them to both lie down, albeit pressed together, side by side.

They heard the truck stop, the engine clatter, quiet, die its slow diesel death. The heard voices, scattered by the wind and muffled by the barn, so Sarah could not quite make out what they were saying (her Russian had improved immensely in the past few weeks - she was ahead of Bryce already). But it was clear that orders were being shouted. Sarah then heard what she expected. A different kind of shout: the chain had been discovered. Suddenly the voices grew quiet. All the sound outside the barn ceased, other than the background rush of the wind.

After a couple of moments of nothing but the wind, Sarah heard the door begin to open, a thin creak. She commanded a good view of the door; she saw the barrel of an automatic weapon stick through the narrow opening. Her best guess was that she had heard three distinct voices, so she was willing to take the number of men outside to be at least three. There might have been others who were silent. She took their best chance to be to wait and let the men enter (men-it could have been women, but these were presumably Orlov's employees, so _men_ ) and then to try to pick them off after they separated to search the barn. They almost surely would, since if they did not, then the intruders (Sarah and Carina) would be able to slip out of one side of the barn while they were on the other. Yes, they would separate. She whispered quietly into Carina's ear. She nodded her understanding and took a deep breath. Sarah knew that this sort of up-close violence was not really Carina's meter, although she knew from Carina's file that she was not a complete stranger to violence.

The first man came through the door, scanning the room with his gun and his eyes. Luckily, he did not look up. Sarah was counting on it taking them time to decide to do that. Another man and another gun. And another. Then no more. Maybe there were more outside, but none of the three men held themselves as if there were reinforcements outside, and the last one to enter had not looked back or made any gesture that would indicate someone outside, watching. Sarah would work on the assumption that there were three.

They split as he knew they would. The first man, the leader obviously, stepped into the center aisle between the stacks of boxes, the other two he gestured to go around left and right, respectively. Watching them, Sarah estimated the lesser threat to be the man heading right, and that was the side they were on. She pointed at him while looking at Carina and mouthing: "Yours." Carina began to slide off the box they shared, working her way down to her target.

That left Sarah with her two. She knew that the best chance was to take one out before any of the others knew their number was depleted. She gathered herself into a kneeling position. The center aisle between the crates was probably five feet across. She could leap, but she had no way of getting much of a run at it. She could not miss; she would make too much noise. She pulled out a knife and put it in her mouth, putting her S&W away for the moment. She scooted silently back, giving herself a couple of steps before the leap. She looked behind her. Carina was still working her way down, slowly and quietly. So far, she had done well. She was moving toward an intersection with her target in a couple of minutes. Sarah needed to move quickly. She took a deep breath and exhaled it as she tried to generate momentum in two steps. She went airborne, across the aisle.

Her demanding physical regimens, her acquired power, and native grace, all aided her. She made the leap and landed softly, just barely on the box opposite the one she had been on. She bounced from one down onto another, then bounced down onto another, and then bounced onto her target. Perfect timing. He had no idea she was coming. She drove the knife into his throat as she landed on him, and he crumpled beneath her with a whimper and a spray of blood. He was dead when they both hit the floor.

Sarah made sure he was, then she wheeled and began running quietly toward the other end of the barn, hoping to beat the leader to the end of the aisle. She needed to keep him from catching up to Carina, since, although Carina was good, she was not the trained assassin Sarah was and had just shown herself to be ( _silent death from above_ ). The chances she could survive the task Sarah gave her Sarah rated as high ( _I would never have given it to her otherwise_ ) but her chance of doing it silently - that was 50-50 at best. And if the leader got to Carina first, she would be seriously outgunned.

Sarah sprinted as hard as she could consistent with staying quiet. She was good at this. The best. Whatever else was true about that bastard Graham, he was not wrong about her gifts. She had been forged in his foundry. She could be hard and cold, all sharp edges, all steel.

She heard it. A gunshot. A pistol, not a rifle. One shot. Sarah forgot about silence. Only speed mattered. She rounded the end of the crates and turned up the center aisle. The leader was now running. He saw her, but she fell into a roll just as he did. A burst from the rifle passed over her head. She rolled, somersaulted, twice, right into his legs. She heard the snap of a tendon as one of his knees flexed the wrong way, and she heard a moan of pain. She scrambled to her feet, pulling her pistol and pivoting. She snapped off a shot before he could get up, around, and aim his rifle, slowed as he was by the encumbrance of the rile itself and by his ruined knee.

Sarah's bullet embedded itself in the man's forehead, and he fell first to his knees and then onto his face.

Carina came running around and up the aisle from the opposite side. She skidded to a stop, almost like a cartoon character. She looked at the man on the floor, blood beginning to pool around his head, and then at Sarah. Sarah saw Carina's eyes widen. Sarah then realized she had been caught in the spray of blood from the first man. It was all over her, her face and hair and hands. Carina quickly looked away, but Sarah saw a flash of something before she did. It had looked like fear.

Sarah re-focused. She turned and ran down the center aisle toward the door. She heard Carina running a step or so behind her. When Sarah neared the door, she slowed. She saw Carina raise her pistol. Sarah got to the door and she threw it back, stepping out of the way as it went swinging by her. She knelt down, gun up. No one was there, at least no one she could see. She went outside and slowly circled the truck, knowing Carina was circling on the other side. They met at the rear. As far as Sarah could tell, she and Carina were now alone. They checked the truck. The rear was empty. The keys were in the ignition.

They went back inside. Sarah made the call the sound of the truck had interrupted. The team from Moscow was heading for them, as soon as they loaded equipment for contending with chemical weapons. She then walked around the boxes to the first man she killed. She pulled her knife from his neck, wiping it on her pants. Then she put it away.

She looked up to find Carina watching her with shaken fascination. Carina gave Sarah a broken smile and turned away. Sarah was annoyed with herself. She had never had an audience at a killing and aftermath of a killing before, and she was not sure how it might affect Carina, especially when it was piled on to Carina herself having killed a man. Sarah realized that Carina looked slightly sick. Sarah let Carina t the barn. She called Bryce. He was heading home after his outing with Orlov. Sarah gave him a quick update and asked him to let Graham know what had happened. She was not ready to talk to Graham herself.

She found Carina outside, one hand on a knee and the other wiping her mouth. She was bent over a stain in the snow. She twisted to look up to Sarah, trying to smirk but not quite making it. "Intense. Not exactly my scene. I mean...I get it. Had to be done. But I had never really imagined your _work_...you _at work_. I knew - but I didn't know - you know?"

Sarah nodded sadly. "I know." She had no idea what to say. She felt exposed as she never had before. Carina had seen a part of her that she kept hidden away, out of view of everyone, herself included, a part of her that existed only in the dark. She knew she could do such things, had done them, would presumably do them in the future - and not in self-defense, but under orders, Graham's orders. He had taken part of her and darkened it, enshadowed it, and she was not sure it was a part of her that she could, or that she wanted, to reclaim. But it was a part of her she could not alienate wholly either, or deny: it was a part of _her._ She wondered what the effect of seeing it would be on Carina. Carina was no innocent; she was not uninitiated into the violence of the spy world, but Sarah knew that Carina would never say 'Headstone' in the same way again.

ooOoo

By the time they got home, Bryce had taken Orlov out of circulation. He would be smuggled out of the country. His lieutenants had been herded up and would be gotten out soon. All would be interrogated.

Martha Orlov would wake up a rich woman (although less rich than she might have thought) with a missing husband. Sarah imagined Martha would recover from the horrible shock of it before she finished her coffee. A demitasse of heartbreak.

The Moscow CIA team had secured the weapons, particularly the chemical weapons. Bryce had coordinated it all, with Graham's help, as he drove to Moscow. It was a weird but not unheard of anti-climax to the mission, at least for him. For Sarah and Carina, it did not quite feel that way.

Bryce was relieved when Sarah and Carina returned to Moscow. He grabbed Sarah and hugged her. The hug did a lot to chase away the strangeness that had encircled her since Carina's shaken look.

Carina was going to stay on for a couple of days more before she headed back to the States. Bryce told Sarah that Graham would let them know about their next mission soon. He had said something about someplace warm. South America.

Carina was already asleep in the living room. Bryce was in bed and Sarah came out of the bathroom. She got in bed beside him. He rolled over to her. "Excited about the next mission?"

"Yes, I guess so, but I want to put this one behind me first. I'm looking forward to a couple of non-mission days with you. A couple of days of Bryce and Sarah. Well, plus Carina. Still," she snuggled down against him, "it'll be nice. My best friend and my boy…" She felt Bryce stiffen against her, "...and my partner."

Bryce looked at her. "You know I'm crazy about you, Mrs. Anderson." Sarah was not sure if she smiled or frowned or somehow did both, but she dropped her head and answered after a long moment.

"You too, Bryce."

ooOoo

Sarah got up early. Bryce was asleep. She let him sleep. Carina was snoring away on the living room couch. Sarah carried her socks and boots into the kitchen and put them on there, hopping around on the linoleum floor as she pushed her feet into her boots. She had looked out the window and knew she was facing a fresh, heavy snow.

She walked out into it. The snow was falling, or rather floating down, but heavy and wet. She pulled her cap down and her scarf up and trudged into the Moscow wind.

She fingered the key Donald had given her. It was in the warmth of her coat pocket. She wondered what he had left there. She walked a few blocks to the station and went inside, standing just inside the doorway for a moment, defrosting. _Ice Queen. Shit. Didn't need that thought._ Once she'd warmed up, she crossed the lobby and found the long row of lockers. The one she was after was among a group of lockers available to be purchased, not just rented. She found the one matching the number on her key and she opened it. She expected to find files, papers...evidence.

Instead, she found the violin from Leipzig, in its still-familiar case. The violin she had left behind. The music she had left behind.

She had not allowed herself to feel that she missed it. But she had. Her eyes filled with tears and she felt short of breath, her chest tight. San Diego, the good days there, Gale and Mort and feeling okay, sometimes even feeling good.

Now she was in Moscow ( _a million miles and more away from that girl_ ), and how did she feel? She thought of Bryce, asleep as she left the bed in their dark bedroom.

How did she feel? Did she love him? She had never used that word before. _Love._ She knew what it meant, in Mr. Webster's sense - she knew its definition. She had actually looked it up the night before: an _affection of the mind excited by beauty and worth of any kind, or by the qualities of an object which communicate pleasure, sensual or intellectual. It is opposed to hatred._ _ **Love**_ _between the sexes, is a compound affection, consisting of esteem, benevolence, and animal desire._

That was what Webster said. A compound affection. The animal desire was there: he wasn't faking or exaggerating that. She knew he esteemed her as a spy. He spoke in glowing, respectful terms of her rescue in Penang, of her work with him in Moscow. He had told her: she was the best spy he knew. He said so to Carina. He understood, he recognized (and she believed him) why Graham had chosen her, made her his Enforcer. He knew of the wetwork she had often done and he understood it. He did not ever focus on it, never asked her to revisit or consider it, never asked her about it or how she felt about it. He left that part of her past, as he really left all of her past, alone.

What about benevolence, though? Could she say that Bryce showed her benevolence? Was he really concerned about her well-being, for her own sake, independent of him? Did he really care about her as a woman, a person, or did he only care about her as his partner? Were they together _full stop_? Or just together _now_?

"I'm crazy about you, Mrs. Anderson." One line, both giving and taking.

She did not know - about Bryce, about herself, about all of it. She looked again at the violin in its case, the rich wood, and its patina, warm and almost alive.

It seemed a symbol of her heart, left behind her on her first mission, and now secreted away in frozen Moscow. Maybe that was where the heart of the Ice Queen belonged. Maybe someday she would transplant it from the locker. But not today, not while she remained a spy. Not while she was still Graham's Enforcer. It had to remain on ice. She shut the case. She closed the locker. She turned the key.

She walked back into the central part of the station. She went to a desk and bought an envelope and enough postage to send a letter to the US. She wrote an address on the envelope and then wrapped the key in a folded piece of paper and stuffed it inside. The address was her mother's, Emma's.

One day while Bryce was working, Sarah went to a library and carefully searched for her mother. For some reason, she found herself wondering about her, wanting to talk to her. She discovered her in California, address and phone number. She had not yet written or called. She dropped the envelope into a wire basket for outgoing mail, full primarily of postcards.

She tightened her coat around her and went back out into the cold.

ooOoo

When Sarah got back to the apartment, both Bryce and Carina were up. The atmosphere in the apartment seemed charged, strained, but Bryce and Carina seemed upbeat, cheerful. It felt forced.

Bryce asked where Sarah had been. She wordlessly held up a bag from the bakery (she stopped at it on the way back from the train station). Carina had made coffee so they sat down to eat.

As they finished, Bryce left to get a shower. Sarah noticed Carina relax a bit as he left the room.

"Carina, what's up? Is something wrong?"

Carina looked at her. "No, nothing. Bryce dropped the tea kettle and woke me up from a...weird dream. It made me...pissy. Sorry."

" _It?_ The abrupt awakening or the dream?"

"Both, I guess."

Carina forked the last bite of her pastry but then left it on her plate. "You know, Headstone..." Carina paused, feeling the word's new weight on her tongue, "Spies don't fall in love."

"I know."

"This thing with Bryce. I'm not saying it can't last...but do you really think it can change, be more?"

Sarah sipped her coffee. "It doesn't have to change. I'm happy. Partners." Bryce thought of her as Mrs. Anderson. Her heart was locked away in a train station.

Carina stared at her hard, with skepticism in her eyes. Then she finally ate the last bite of her pastry.

ooOoo

Carina left the next day. She and Bryce seemed to have gotten past their tension. After seeing her off, Bryce and Sarah spent two more days in Moscow. Then they left for South America. They were there for much longer than expected, moving from country to country and mission to mission. The missions were all successful. The Andersons were a very good team.

Sarah worked hard to be Mrs. Anderson. Bryce had never spoken of them as a couple, had never talked of a future that was not also a mission forecast. He wanted her, he was fond of her, he respected her. She was not unhappy. She was better than she had been. She had an almost-companion: it was better than being alone.

It helped that she had not been sent on any Enforcer missions since Graham teamed her with Bryce. For whatever reason, Graham seemed finally to be focused elsewhere and not on Sarah.

Things went along like that - partners - for a while without change. Until there was a change. For the worse. It was subtle but real. Bryce came back to their hotel room in Colombia one evening and seemed distracted. He had gone out to meet a mark he was cultivating, and he said that had gone well. But something had happened, and he did not offer to elaborate.

From that evening on, Bryce seemed often preoccupied. He became more careful about their missions, about meetings with contacts. Sarah was not displeased; she had always thought his spying was a little too 'cowboy.' But the change bothered her because he would not explain it. She did not ask, of course, but she hoped he would tell.

But why did she hope for that? She had still told him nothing about herself, nothing about Graham's manipulations. She tried, but at the crucial moment her tongue petrified and she lost the power of speech.

It took her a long time to work it out, but she finally understood, gloomily, that the problem was that she did not trust him fully. And she knew he returned the favor or the disfavor. They were together, partners, but did not fully trust one another. That was not because either had given the other a concrete reason not to trust. It was because they were both _professionally_ mistrustful, and because their relationship ( _or whatever this is_ ) existed _inside_ their professional lives, was given its structure by their professional lives. Sarah finally worked out that the true opposite of love is not hate - it is mistrust. ( _Take that, Webster._ ) To the extent that there was any truth in "Spies don't fall in love", that was it. Their mistrust of each other meant that the Andersons were all they could be. That was okay. Being the Andersons was good. It was enough.

Sarah did not need Carina's skeptical look to prompt the next thought. _Liar._

* * *

 **A/N2** Busy little chapter. Tricky work, trying to capture Sarah's emotional _to and fro_.

Tune in next time. Cabo. Bryce disappears. Sarah returns to Langley. And more.

Like so much with Sarah, the exact nature of her relationship with Bryce is hard to determine. Bryce claims that she (still) loves him, but his later comment about her difficulty saying how she feels suggests that the _love-_ comment is Bryce's interpretation of Sarah's feelings. It seems she has never told him that. Maybe he is right, but _maybe not_.

One thing I have become acutely aware of in working through this story sequence and in rethinking canon is that, over and over in the show, other characters interpret Sarah, but that she rarely, almost never, ratifies any of the interpretations. I could run through a long list of instances other than the Bryce one, but I will spare you.

My own view of the show, given what I take to be the centrality of point-counterpoint to its overarching structure, is that we ought to interpret the Sarah/Bryce relationship in light of the Chuck/Jill relationship. That does not mean that all the details are the same, but it does mean that both Sarah and Chuck have unfinished business with Bryce and Jill, respectively. It also means that those who are willing to tolerate Chuck's short 'return' to Jill ought to do the same with Sarah's Bryce kissing (and leanings-in for kisses).

Of course, the reason for the differential responses by viewers is largely that Bryce reappears so early, when we still are trying to understand Sarah, and long before Jill reappears (though she has been looming from the beginning, remember). Bryce just feels so much more 'threatening' to Chuck and Sarah than Jill ever does. Still, I do think the final settling of accounts with Sarah/Bryce requires setting it alongside Chuck/Jill and working out the settlement pairwise (so to speak).

Anyway, we have one more Bryce chapter to go. Then a big Budapest chapter. Then Burbank. Of course, there will be unhappiness in Burbank, but there will be happiness too, real happiness.


	17. Not Nothing (Five)

**A/N1** Ok. I've been pushing certain issues along, waiting for this chapter. The chapter is, in many ways, the real end of the pre-canon story sequence. The coming Budapest chapter is transitional, both pre-canon and canon in almost equal measure, since we know quite a bit (comparatively) about that mission from (S5 of) canon.

Thanks for reviewing and PMing. Please continue to do so. If you haven't reviewed or PMed me yet, please do. I do love to hear your thoughts and reactions.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 _Not Nothing, Not Something (Part Five)_ :

 _Not The Girl You Think You Are_

* * *

All the people that you know, yeah  
Will turn their heads as you go by  
But you'll be hard to recognize  
With the top down and the wind blowing, blowing

He won't deceive you or tell you the truth  
Woman, he'll be no trouble

He won't write you letters full of excuses  
C'mon, I believe you have one in a million

You're not the girl you think you are, yeah  
There's someone standing in your place  
The bathroom mirror makes you look tall,  
But it's all in your head, in your head

-Crowded House, _Not The Girl You Think You Are_

* * *

Bryce continued to behave strangely. Sarah felt lost, at loose ends, uncertain.

Graham, very pleased with their successes in Moscow and in South America, particularly in Colombia, offered them some time off. They chose to go to Cabo. Sarah wanted to warm up. She was delighted with it. But Bryce was half there, half not. He was distracted. Whatever was bothering him, he still kept to himself. His efforts to hide that it was bothering him were not successful, though, and Sarah began to wonder if he was tired of the Andersons.

She was stretched out on a chaise lounge beneath a large beach umbrella, trying to enjoy the view: _trying,_ since Bryce, her company, was only mechanically companionable. She had to draw him out, make him talk or respond to her. He would do so, but he fell back into himself almost immediately. It was like pulling the string on the 'talking' doll she remembered having when she was very young.

Their time in Cabo had been less than Sarah hoped - but then that had been the story of their partnership. Less. They were neither strangers nor intimate, not exactly friends but not exactly lovers. They were what they were. Less. Sarah thought that time off, time when there was no mission and no mission on the horizon, might finally allow them to find each other as people, as a woman and a man, and to finally talk to each other, tell each other things. Less converted to more. But it had not happened. It turned out that when they were not the Andersons, they were not much of anything at all.

Sarah sighed to herself, not intending for Bryce to hear, but he did. He looked at her, almost as if he were just then discovering her seated beside him.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Not really. You just seem preoccupied."

"Sorry, I don't mean to be." She saw him push away whatever he had been thinking about. "I'll do better."

"It's okay. We should try to relax. We don't know how long we will have or when we will get more downtime."

Bryce looked away then back at her, one eyebrow raised, his forehead clenched.

"Do you think Graham will call you back to Enforcer work soon?"

Sarah felt her throat tighten. Graham had still not sent her on a solo mission, had not called on his Enforcer. She had been able to not think about any of that for a while. Why was Bryce asking about it?

"I don't know. But so far he seems happy with us as a team, as partners." She forced herself to smile. "Maybe he will let us keep working together?"

Bryce picked up a handful of sand and let it run between his fingers, catching it in the palm of his other hand before repeating the procedure. Sarah watched and waited.

After a bit, Bryce spoke. "Maybe. But I figure we are already on borrowed time. I have a feeling he's going to want you back, back...doing what you do." He watched the sand.

"If he does, if Graham separates us, what happens, Bryce?" Sarah looked at his hands, the sand - she could not look him at his face as he answered.

"We could try to see each other, but it won't be easy. Once you are back doing what you do, and I go back under deep cover, which seems likely, it will be almost impossible for us to find each other. But maybe we could see each other...once in a while." He dumped the sand from his hand onto the beach and wiped his hands on his trunks. He stole a glance at her just as she did at him.

"Right. Spies. I could give you a burner; you could give me one. We could at least talk." _We don't talk now, face-to-face, what chance we will burner-to-burner?_

Bryce nodded. "Let's do that if we get separated." Bryce looked off into the distance. Sarah followed his gaze but saw nothing but blue ocean beneath a blue sky.

ooOoo

The next day, there was a knock at the door. A hotel porter was there with an envelope for Sarah. Inside, were round-trip tickets to Pakistan, the return ticket's date open. Sarah's phone rang. Graham. Bryce was downstairs doing laps in the pool. Sarah answered.

"Walker here."

"Agent Walker, I am sending you to Pakistan. I am doing it as a favor to the DEA, and to Carina Miller, for her help in Moscow. She is undercover there and needs your skills. I am sorry to interrupt your vacation. You may return to Cabo once you finish. I have no mission for you coming up. You should only be in Pakistan for a couple of days. I thought you would want to go, seeing as it is Agent Miller who needs you…"

Sarah's disappointment was eclipsed by concern for Carina. It was not like Carina to ask for help, in part because Carina's own missions, as Sarah knew from her file and from conversations with her, tended to be seat-of-her-pants, impromptu affairs, short on planning and long on nerve. Carina would hardly ever know ahead of time if she needed help or not. If she thought she did, then something was up.

She ended the call and grabbed her suitcase. Bryce came in as she finished up and she explained. He started to say something, but then caught himself. Instead, he called for a car to take her to the airport. She closed her suitcase and grabbed her purse. Bryce walked to her and took her in his arms. He gave her a surprisingly intense kiss. "Be careful, Sarah." She nodded, moved by the kiss, unable to speak.

She hugged him and went out the door, finally speaking just before it closed. "Be back as soon as I can, Bryce."

ooOoo

Karachi. Sarah went to the hotel Graham mentioned. Carina was supposed to be there. She went to the front desk. A key was supposed to be there. It was - but there was also a note.

* * *

 _S,_

 _Situation developing quickly. Key players at a house party. Akeel Ahktar's place. Had to go on my own. Put on a party dress and come. Put something under it, if you know what I mean._

 _Kisses,_

 _C_

* * *

There was an address scribbled at the bottom of the page. A house party.

Sarah knew that Pakistan had once been famous for its nightlife, back before the rise of fundamentalist religion, before terrorists and mad clerics. Now, its nightlife existed only behind closed doors, each a temporary version of a speakeasy. But it was a dangerous scene, crisscrossed by political and religious and personal agendas, fueled by bootleg alcohol, and, in the typically cramped spaces, lawless. Sarah had been in Karachi once before on Graham's orders. She knew how things worked.

She went upstairs to the room quickly and donned a navy dress, knives beneath it, her S&W and its silencer in her bag. She wrapped herself in a long, thin coat she had put in her suitcase so that the dress was not on display. She phoned the desk and asked them to secure her a rental car. She finished getting ready and headed downstairs. The car was ready.

Sarah had negotiated the roadways in the city before. Her map of the place was still clear in her mind. She found Ahktar's house easily enough. It was quite large, and although there were not lots of cars in front of it, there were cars up and down the street and all along the side streets. Sarah parked her car on a nearby side street. She walked to the house and knocked on the front door, but only after she unbuttoned her coat to reveal the short navy dress. She saw someone look through a small opening in the door, glance up and down her figure, and then she heard the door open. A darkly bearded man ushered her in without comment, although his eyes lingered on her legs.

Sarah walked along a hallway toward the loud music - rap music. She found an impromptu nightclub set up in the lavish living room. A tattooed DJ was supplying the music. There was a bar. Lots of men and women in nightclub clothes, trendy, slim suits, and slinky dresses, were moving about, many dancing. Sarah walked to the bar and ordered a gin and tonic. The bartender stared at her for a moment, then shook his head.

"What?" Sarah decided to try English.

"It must be the season for Amazons from the States. Two tall beauties in one night. Remarkable."

The bartenders English was polished, accented. Oxford, probably, for university work.

"Oh, I was looking for my friend. She's a tall redhead...Oh, well, I guess you know that."

The bartender grinned. "I know who you mean. She left a bit ago. With a couple of men." The bartender's voice quieted at the end, but the rise in inflection made it clear what he took Carina and the men now to be doing. He said nothing more. He seemed to be waiting for her reaction.

Sarah smiled at him, a slight suggestion on her lips. "Where's the nearest bedroom?" She asked the question as she slipped out of her coat and folded it over her arm, careful not to hide any of herself with it, particularly not her long bare legs.

The bartender grinned again and pointed to another hallway. "Down that way. Upstairs. The master bedroom is the first at the top." He looked at Sarah as if he wanted to follow her upstairs but couldn't. She smiled again, collected her drink and headed for the hallway. Luckily, no one tried to stop her or accompany her, though she knew the bartender's eyes were affixed to her backside.

Down the hallway, she climbed the stairs. At the top, she had a feeling, hard to qualify but clear, a feeling of present danger. She slipped off her heels and kicked them to the side. She dropped her coat on top of them and pulled her gun from her purse. She threaded on the silencer. She tiptoed, barefoot, to the master bedroom door. She heard three voices: two men and Carina. She was being interrogated. Sarah heard Carina's unmistakable, smirking laugh, and then a smack. The laugh stopped.

Sarah encircled the doorknob gently with her unoccupied hand and gave it a slow twist. Unlocked. She heard another smack and heard Carina groan. Real pain. Sarah wished she understood the situation better. Carina was to have explained it. The note made nothing clear. _No time for explanations now, though, only for action._

Sarah pushed the door open and raised her pistol. Carina was tied to a chair in the room, her face red, her mouth bleeding. One man was standing over her, fist back, about to hit her. The other man was seated near her, a gun aimed casually at her head.

Sarah fired twice in quick succession, the muted sound causing Carina to look up, see her. Sarah shot the man with the gun first, but the other man did not have time to throw his punch. Her second shot felled him before he could strike.

"Thank God," Carina whispered as Sarah moved to her. She put her gun down and retrieved a knife, cutting Carina free. She put the knife away and picked up the gun. Carina stood up, wobbly. She smiled at Sarah and wiped the blood from her mouth, gathering herself.

"Lucky for those two you got here when you did. A few more minutes and I would have had to take matters in my own hands and it wouldn't have been quick or painless, let me tell you…" She made a violent twisting motion with her hand. "Their balls."

Sarah shook her head at Carina's bravado and motioned for them to go. She put her shoes back on and put her gun away. She hung her coat over her arm. Carina adjusted her hair and dress.

"Just walk beside me. Smile and laugh." They went down the stairs, back through the hallway and into the now more crowded living room. Sarah steered a path through the dancers to the door. The bearded man stepped in front of the door.

Sarah gave him her widest smile. "My friend and I are entertaining...upstairs...but we forget some...items...we need. We'll be right back. Please hold my coat?" The man looked confused and slightly aroused at the same time. Sarah shoved her coat at him without waiting for an answer, and then when his hands were full of it, she grabbed the door and opened it herself. She and Carina breezed out and walked quickly to the rental. They jumped in and drove away, both exhaling at the same time.

"Too bad about your coat, but that was quick thinking. I'm glad you came."

"Me too. But sorry about the mission. I assume it is a bust."

"No, actually, they told me what I wanted to know, the source of the drugs I've been tracking. But they never expected me to live to tell anyone. Do you have your phone?"

Sarah gestured at her bag, between them. Carina dug out the phone and made a call. She detailed the information she had been given.

"Well, I think that will shut down a serious pipeline of heroin from Afghanistan through Pakistan to India, and on to other parts of the world, even the US. This will move me up the DEA covert ladder another rung or two."Carina smiled and returned the phone.

ooOoo

They got back to the hotel and Carina began to pack.

"You should have waited for me. You must have known the situation was dangerous if you asked for me."

"Yeah, but things moved fast, and you know I like to keep my plans fluid."

"Right, assuming 'fluid' means _non-existent_."

"Well, I knew it was dangerous. These guys aren't gangbangers or pushers, they are full-on killers. But I also knew that Akeem - the one with the gun - has a taste for leggy blondes. I thought I had more time. I figured you were the perfect fit. Plus, I missed you. Was worried about you."

Sarah rolled her suitcase toward the door as she listened. She turned back around.

"Worried?"

Carina looked nervous. It was maybe the first time Sarah could remember that look on Carina's face. Carina blew out a breath, blew it out so hard that her bangs lifted.

Her voice lost its normal undertone of banter. "That morning in Moscow, when I told you I had a bad dream…"

"What about it?"

"I actually had a...chat with Bryce."

"A chat?"

"Yeah, he was in the living room and I woke up and I caught him staring at my legs. It pissed me off - both that he was doing it when he thought I was asleep, and that he was doing it when he was your partner. So, I pushed the issue: I asked him if he was interested, and I showed him more leg, slipped the quilt up higher. He shook his head, said no."

Sarah felt relief rush through her, but then Carina went on. "He told me that he was your partner...but that maybe sometime in the future he and I could be partners. I asked if he planned on ending his partnership with you. He shrugged and said it was out of his hands, but that, if it happened, he would look me up."

Sarah felt sick to her stomach, double-green with nausea and jealousy. The words were out before she considered them. "Why would you do that, Carina? _Tempt_ him?"

Carina's voice hardened when she answered. "Sarah, hey, _he_ was the one staring at me when he thought I didn't know it, when he thought I was asleep! I just wondered what he had in mind. Not because I was interested in the answer for my sake, but for yours."

"Right! So why didn't you tell me? What would you have done if he'd tried to...partner...with you there and then?"

"What would I…? You are _really_ asking me that? _Why_?"

"Why? Because you sleep with anything that moves, Carina. Animal, vegetable, mineral. You've told me so. I've seen it."

Carina flared, incandescent. "I've told you a lot of things. You've seen a lot. I thought you understood it. _Me_. Shit, Headstone, we can't all live the tight-assed ascetic assassin life you live. Some of us have warm blood in our veins, not icy slush."

Sarah was past trying to understand. _Headstone. Ice Queen. Bryce staring at Carina_. "So, you admit it, you would've slept with Bryce. You want to sleep with Bryce!" Sarah reddened, furious at Carina, furious at Bryce, furious that she was in Pakistan and not Cabo...just _furious_. Graham. Her father. The CIA. Life. _My whole shithole life_.

She rushed on. "You know, Carina, you did this 'taking what Sarah wants' thing when we were CATs. I'm tired of it, done with it. I can make my own decisions, Carina, make my own choices. I'm tired of you treating me like I don't know my own mind or heart. I'm here in Karachi because I care about a friend. Cared, anyway. Someone who I thought was a friend…not just a _whore_."

Carina glared at Sarah in silence, her eyes flaming. Sarah grabbed her suitcase, went out the door, and slammed it. She did not look back. Carina did not follow.

Sarah was fortunate at the airport, and did not have to wait long to get a flight out. She tried to call Bryce but got no answer.

She sat on the plane in misery. Had she overreacted? _Probably._ _Yes. Damn jealousy. Damage done._ She was striking out at so much more than Carina. _She should have told me. She shouldn't have tested Bryce._ Sarah just wanted to get to Cabo. She wanted to talk to Bryce. They needed to talk, to finally, finally talk. She was ready. She needed to know what was and was not happening between them.

ooOoo

It turned out to be what was _not_ happening between them.

Sarah got back to Cabo, wired, strung out, unhappy. She got to their room and found it was now her room.

Bryce was gone. His suitcase. All traces of him except a ring of stubble in the bottom of the bathroom sink, carelessly rinsed. Gone. She checked her phone. Nothing. She checked the room for a note. Nothing. She called the desk. Nothing.

Nothing. Gone. Sarah climbed on the bed face-down and she wept. Bryce gone. Carina gone.

She was alone again.

Nothing. No one.

She waited in Cabo for two days. She called Bryce's phone. Nothing. No response. What they had might not have been something, exactly, but it had not been nothing. And now she did not even have that, the not-nothing of it.

The third day she called Graham. She did not know what else to do. He was as surprised as she was by Bryce's disappearance. AWOL. He ordered her back to Langley. He had a new mission for her. He promised to do all he could to find Bryce. She believed him. He did not know where Bryce had gone; she could hear it in his voice. She headed to the airport, to DC.

She was the Enforcer again.

ooOoo

Graham was seated when Sarah entered the office. He gestured for her to sit. She did. He leaned back in his chair and studied her. She knew then that he knew, knew that she and Bryce had been together. He was trying to gauge the effects of Bryce's disappearance. _Is his weapon still functional?_ The fury Sarah had been wrestling with for the last several days began to burn in her chest.

"So, are you ready for a new mission, Agent Walker?"

"I'm as ready as you've made me."

Graham quirked an eyebrow, both at what Sarah said and its openly defiant tone.

"I'm sorry about your partner. We cannot find him. He has gone dark. Given that he left no word with anyone, particularly you," Graham gave her a long look, "we have to conclude that the situation is...unfavorable. Perhaps he has been taken. Perhaps he has been killed. Perhaps he has...changed sides. But it is hard to take his disappearance as anything but bad. I'm sorry to say that to...you. Still, you must know it."

She nodded. Talking about Bryce leaving, leaving her, was not something she wanted to do with Graham. "So, the new mission. What is it?"

Graham leaned forward. "A target. Someone we need to _disappear_. He…"

"So you are sending me out to kill someone. Now. After everything that's happened. Back at it. Enforce. See no one who is not under crosshairs. I am so tired of this, Langston."

Graham's head snapped up and he smiled or bared his teeth or both. "Agent Walker, you do not refer to me by my first name." A growl in Graham's chest. A threat.

"And you are my boss, not my maker. I am not your creature, Langston. I know what you have done to me. I know. Do you understand?" Her voice was quiet but firm.

He looked at her. "Melden. It's bad when an agent goes soft in the head, but worse when he goes soft in the heart. Melden believed...various things. They are not true. I don't know what you are accusing me of but…"

"I am accusing you of being a son of a bitch, Langston." Not so quiet, her voice, but still firm. "You are a miserable son of a bitch. What you have done to me…"

"Done _to_ you? You took to this like a duck to water. If you think you are damaged, look farther back, Sarah, back to Jack Burton. If I am guilty of anything, it is of completing the course of study he started you on as a child."

"Are you really going to try to wash your hands of this? Deny it? Make it my fault? I was a minor when you sent me to the fucking Farm. A girl. Exposed before she got there to things no one should be exposed to. Yes, Jack Burton has things to answer for. But I was also exposed to so little. But you made sure I got exposed to it all at the Farm and while running your...errands. I will not pretend that I bear no blame for what I am, but I had so little choice. You made sure I had so...little...choice. No one should be able to do what I can do. I hate that I can. I hate myself for that. But I hate you too, for figuring out that I could do it, and for finding ways to push me to do it. You are a son of a bitch."

Sarah could not remember stringing so many words together at once. But she was raging now, years of frustration and disappointment and pain and unhappiness and...darkness. And the cause of it was seated in front of her.

"Agent Walker, unless you are resigning, I suggest you hold your tongue. I have heard all of this I am going to hear. I will not be talked to like that, especially not in my own office."

Resign? Yes, that was what she ought to do. Walk. She had thought about it. Repeatedly. But the old problem was still the problem. What else was there for her? She had been in the shadows for so long they had become integrated into her substance. She was a killer. Graham had let her father go after her Red Test because he knew he had her then, knew she would not be able to leave. He had made her a killer. He really had planned well. He knew her. She hated that, absolutely hated it, but he did. He could never have manipulated her if he did not know her. He did not care about her, but he knew her.

Her fury died down and she felt flaccid, a deflated balloon. _What color was my life when it was my life?_ She had taken her shots. The clip was empty. Graham was still standing, or seated, anyway.

"Agent Walker, I think I will _not_ send you on the mission I had in mind. You are hereby suspended with pay for a week. Please leave Langley immediately. If you do not, I will have you escorted from the building. I need to give some thought to your future."

Graham knew her. Time off was what she feared. Time to herself. Time with herself. Time to reflect, consider. The corpse dream had come back in Cabo, haunting her even before Bryce left. _Had he ever really been there?_ Graham was giving her time to dream.

Sarah got up and left the office. The drive to her apartment was a dull blur. _Batty:_ " _It's not an easy thing to meet your maker...Can the maker repair what he makes?" Lines from Blade Runner. Tyrell: "What seems to be the problem?" Batty: "Death." - Of course, I mean that answer in a different way than Roy Batty._

She needed to release her anger, let it run from her. What good would come of it? She had a job. _A damned job_. She was good at it. _Damned good_. Death was her gift.

She lived on the outskirts of hell; that was her permanent address until the bullet or blade with her name on it arrived. She wondered which name it would be.

 _Damn._

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for Chapter 18, "Blood and Talcum Powder". Budapest. Baby. Our last stop before Burbank.

I'm facing in-coming stacks of final papers, so things may slow down for a while. We will see. Rainy days here this weekend have left me with time to play guitar and write. I may not have that much free time in the next little while.


	18. Blood and Talcum (One)

**A/N1** My thanks to _Grayroc_ for this chapter title. He used the phrase in a PM and it was too good not to borrow (with his permission). Thanks, G!

This pre-Burbank story sequence has run long but I decided to flesh out the CATs story and the Bryce story to a degree I didn't anticipate.

Thanks for the encouraging PMs and reviews, as well as the favorable mentions in other A/Ns. I appreciate folks granting me the room and the attention necessary to take a shot at this difficult story sequence.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 _Blood and Talcum Powder (Part One)_ :

 _Under Pressure_

* * *

It's the terror of knowing what the world is about  
Watching some good friends screaming  
'Let me out'  
Pray tomorrow gets me higher, high  
Pressure on people, people on streets  
Turned away from it all like a blind man  
Sat on a fence but it don't work  
Keep coming up with love but it's so slashed and torn  
Why, why, why?  
Love, love, love, love, love  
Insanity laughs under pressure we're breaking  
Can't we give ourselves one more chance?  
Why can't we give love that one more chance?  
Why can't we give love, give love, give love, give love  
Give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?  
Cause love's such an old fashioned word  
And love dares you to care for  
The people on the edge of the night  
And love (people on streets) dares you to change our way of  
Caring about ourselves  
This is our last dance  
This is our last dance  
This is ourselves under pressure  
Under pressure  
Pressure  
\- Queen and David Bowie, _Under Pressure_

* * *

The days skidded along, heavy crates pushed across rough concrete.

Graham did not contact Sarah. But she got an email explaining that her suspension with pay had been extended another week. Graham was twisting the knife.

She was profoundly restless. Seriously unhappy. Recriminating memory swaddled her unlovingly. She kept moving around in her apartment as if she could find a corner in which she was not present.

Had Carina told her the truth? Had she lied? If she lied, then what, if anything, really happened? Why would she lie? What was Bryce doing, staring at Carina, if he had? Was he really only mission-with Sarah, and willing to move on to a new mission and a new partner?

But the constant tormentor was the image of Carina and Bryce somewhere together, the thought that he had left her to be with Carina. Sarah did not believe it, but her mind kept a technicolor show of it running in the background, and moved it into the foreground anytime she lost focus.

She could not contact Bryce. The mission phone he had used with her was no longer in service. She did not know what that meant. Carina's burner was in service, but Carina would not answer. She was isolated. In isolation. Incarcerated.

A few days later, at a bar in DC to which Sarah had gone to fight off going stir-crazy, she ran into a Langley analyst. The had met when Sarah was at the Farm and the woman had come to help teach a class on information-gathering techniques. They fell into casual conversation, but it gradually became less casual. The woman told Sarah that she had been at a joint meeting of a DEA/CIA task force earlier in the week, and she mentioned the brazen redhead who was leading the DEA side of things. Miller was her name. The woman also whispered to Sarah that Bryce Larkin was still AWOL, although there was a report of him having been seen in Mexico a day or two ago.

That information finally stopped the technicolor Carina/Bryce show in Sarah's head, but it left her with her other questions.

Why had Bryce left her? Did it have anything to do with her, or was there another reason? She had the questions but no prospect of answers.

ooOoo

In desperation, late one night, she called California. She called her mother. She could think of nowhere else to turn. The first time her mom answered, Sarah hung up. She padded around in her apartment, cursing herself for being a coward. Then she dialed again. Her mom answered and Sarah managed a strangled "Mom?" in response to the hesitant "Hello?"

"Honey, is that you? Oh, my God. At last..."

Sarah had no idea what to say. She choked up; tears filled her eyes.

"Honey? Are you there?"

After another strangled moment: "I'm...here. Mom."

Sarah heard a sob. "Oh, I have hoped...When no one was there a minute ago, I hoped...But usually, it's just a wrong number." Another sob. "How are you?"

 _How am I? A wreck. A killer. Miserable. Friendless. Loveless._ "I'm ok, Mom. How are you?" _The absurdity of asking after years of not contacting her, not trying to contact her._

Her mom did not seem to feel the absurdity. "I'm good. I've been good...for a long time." But there it was, the distance, the time. "Where are you?"

Sarah filtered her answer. "On the east coast."

"Oh. Do you know where your dad is?"

"No. It's been a long time since we've seen each other. Years. I travel a lot for work and his work...well, you know."

"I do. What do you do?"

"International relations sorts of things…."

"Sounds glamorous!" She heard a hint of pride in her mom's voice.

"Not as glamorous as it sounds, believe me. It's...It's hard work."

"Well, at least it's honest." Sarah closed her eyes at that. _Not as honest as it sounds, believe me._ "Any chance you might be on the other coast sometime soon? Any chance I might see you?"

"Not right now. Maybe down the line. We'll see." _I would love to see you and I am scared to death to see you._

"Is there a particular reason why you called now, honey? Is there something I can do for you, some way I can help? I know how tough you are. You always were. But even the tough get overwhelmed sometimes. I know."

"What do you mean?" _Not just a deflection; I want to know._

Her mom was quiet. Then she began, her tone low and apologetic. "All those years ago, when your dad left with you. I thought I was just low, having troubles. It turns out I was suffering from depression. It took several years and a number of changes of medication to help me get right again, functional. I've been doing okay for a while now, but I know what it is to be overwhelmed, swamped. I'm so sorry I wasn't able to fight for you. Or find you when I got better…" More sobbing.

"It's okay, Mom. Really. It was all...a mess...or at least that's how it seemed…"

"Your dad - he took care of you?"

"The best he knew how, Mom, yes."

"Not the most straightforward answer…"

"You know Dad, Mom."

"I guess. I did once. I am sorry."

"Bygones," Sarah sighed.

"So, you sound...sad."

Sarah gulped silently then said what was on her mind, the reason she called. "I just went through a bad...breakup."

"Did you do the breaking?"

"No, I was...done to."

"I've been there...your Dad. I know it hurts...Sam."

Sarah winced. It had been years since she had heard that name, years since it even crossed her mind, really. She associated it with so much hurt and confusion that she avoided it in her thoughts.

"I just...I just don't think I am capable of having a relationship. I think I am too...closed."

"You come by that honestly, Sam. Both your dad and me...we are closed in our different ways. If we weren't maybe we would have worked, worked things out. Maybe I'd have gotten some help sooner."

"My work...makes it worse. I only meet a certain kind of man…"

"Then broaden your horizons, honey."

"Easier said than done, Mom." _Graham controls my horizons._

The whole conversation struck Sarah then as unreal. What was she doing? Talking to her mom about boys? Why had she called?

Because she felt better. But she also felt in over her head. Too much, too fast.

"Look, Mom, I wanted to re-connect, but I can't talk much more right now. I will call you again, okay?

Her mother sounded cautious, unsure. "...Okay."

"I will, Mom. Don't call me, please; I work odd hours. I'm hard to reach. Let me call you, I promise; I will."

"Alright, Sam. Take care of yourself."

"I'll try. Good to talk to you. Really good. Bye." Sarah hung up. That had not gone the way it would have gone on the Hallmark movies she'd tried to watch to fill her evenings. But it had not been a total disaster. And she was not totally alone.

ooOoo

Graham eventually ended the suspension. But he kept twisting the knife in other ways. He did not replace her as his Enforcer. He did not use her as his Enforcer, however. Instead, he sent her on low-stakes busywork missions, the kinds of things beginning recruits at the Farm could have done. Contacts with unpromising marks. Document or cash exchanges. Graham seemed focused elsewhere, and to spare her only enough attention to make sure she understood her place.

It wasn't that she wanted to do wetwork or even the other sorts of high-stakes missions she was used to, but she needed them. She needed the sorts of missions that engaged her full powers, commanded all her attention, drained all her energy. Only those sorts of missions could keep her in the present, keep her from thinking about the past missions of those sorts she had done. She was caught in a bitter paradox: she needed to her job to keep her mind off what she had done on the job - it was a dark homeopathy, treating the sickness with the cause of the sickness.

One day, after a particularly worthless stakeout in a small town in Virginia, she came home to find the light flashing on her burner, the one Carina had given her. Carina had texted her. It had been weeks, no months, since their angry parting in Karachi. There was an address, a diner on the edge of DC that Sarah knew by name but had never visited. She had wanted to go but never could seem to get excited about going by herself.

 **Burger Heaven. 7 pm. Be hungry. Be nice. -C**

Sarah felt a compound of excitement and dread.

 **7 pm. I will be hungry. And nice. -S**

She drove the Porsche to the diner. The car had been her only solace until her call to her mother. She was glad she had called Emma; it had steadied her. She planned to call again soon although she still had not worked out what they could talk about. Virtually every topic seemed doomed - seemed to lead straight to Jack Burton or to Langston Graham.

Sarah put Emma and the challenges of talking to her aside. She focused on Carina and the difficult conversation to come. In the time since she had seen her, Sarah had come to believe that nothing had happened between Carina and Bryce, that the story was, for the most part, as Carina related it. Whether Carina would have really resisted Bryce if he had responded in a different way to her 'invitation' was not entirely certain to Sarah. She wanted to believe she would have resisted, but Carina's view of these things was not the same as Sarah's. They both knew that. That did not mean she could not take on and care about Sarah's view, but it did mean that she might choose not to take on that view, might choose to simply keep her own.

Sarah parked the Porsche and got out. She could see Carina in the restaurant, through one of the large front windows, framed between red and white checked curtains. Carina saw Sarah. They waved at each other awkwardly. Carina frowned. _This is going to be no fun._

Sarah walked in, the bell over the door ringing, making her think of _Ground Chuck,_ of Mort and Gale. She wondered for a split second about them both. Was Mort even still alive? Was Gale married - could she be married to Robert? The question thrilled and depressed Sarah in equal measure, the first for Gale's sake, the second for her own. _Huh?_

She sat down in the booth opposite Carina.

Neither spoke for a long while. Finally, Carina started without any conversational preamble. "So, did Bryce set the record straight?"

Sarah looked at her. What did Carina mean?

"No."

Carina's face hardened; her eyes narrowed. "He claimed I was lying? _The bastard_."

"No. He was gone when I got back to Cabo."

"Gone? A mission? Graham?"

"No one knows. It wasn't Graham, evidently. AWOL. Gone. Just _gone_."

"Shit, Sarah." Carina shook her head, gritting her teeth. " _The bastard_." She seemed genuinely sorry for Sarah, pained. Her eyes shifted, focused on the distance. "In Moscow, I wondered…"

"You _believed_ he would leave?" Sarah cut her off, get angry, her voice rising against her will.

"No! No. But the way he...talked to me in Moscow. It made me wonder if he had already...reconciled himself to it, thought it was inevitable, if maybe not imminent."

"You should have told me in Moscow, Carina."

"I wasn't _sure_...I just _wondered_. You were so...You wanted it to work so much. I didn't know it wouldn't. I made a judgment call, gave it, gave you, a chance."

A waitress came cautiously to the booth. She was wary of the obviously charged atmosphere in it. Turning the pages on her pale green pad of guest checks, she glanced nervously at the two tall, beautiful women, staring intently at each other in palpably explosive silence.

She cleared her throat carefully. "Have you had a chance to decide what you'd like?"

The question struck Sarah and Carina at the same time. "No, not yet. Come back in a minute." Carina said this, all the while staring into Sarah's eyes, all the while Sarah stared back.

The waitress flipped her pad closed and moved quickly away, hoping to get out of the possible blast radius.

"So you haven't heard from him? Not at all?"

"No," Sarah replied, clipping her words, "have you?"

"What's that mean? How many times do I have to tell you that nothing happened? I did not want anything to happen. I was not and am not interested in Bryce Larkin." Carina grabbed a menu finally and began to look at it. After a moment, she looked up. "I don't know why Bryce left, Sarah, or where he went. But he didn't leave _because_ of me."

"So he left because of _me_?" Sarah's eyes blue-burned into Carina, acetylene torches.

"That's not what I meant and you know it."

Sarah's eyes cooled and she claimed a menu herself. She scanned it, trying to control herself. The waitress crept back toward the table, fearful but dutiful. She turned the green pages again, waiting.

Sarah ordered. "Double burger, all the toppings no mayo, but double pickles. Fries. Coke."

Carina echoed the order. The waitress hustled away. "We'd have to spar for hours to undo that," Carina noted, smirking and shaking her head at herself as much as Sarah.

"We haven't done that since the CATs days."

"No, and we only did it a couple of times then; you normally sparred with Zondra."

They both became quiet.

Sarah looked out the window. "It's hard to be a spy and have anything...friends."

After a few moments of silence, they chatted then about this and that. Places Carina had been since Pakistan. The DEA/CIA task force. Guns. Knives.

The waitress arrived with everything, drinks included, just as the conversation shifted from guns to knives. She gulped audibly, spilled a little Coke in her hurry to get away, wiped at it with a rag and then almost ran from the table.

Sarah and Carina ate. Conversation, even the weapons small talk, dried up above the sticky coke-spill stain. The booth's atmosphere grew less charged but somehow even less comfortable.

"You know," Carina said as they ended the meal and were putting down money for the bill, "it's going to take time to get past what we said in Pakistan. But I wanted to let you know that I will try.

"And, I know it annoys you that I interfere…patronize or, I guess, _matronize_ you. But you are...well, you are a complicated piece of work, Headstone. The last person to know anything about you is _you_. You need someone to be the middleman... _middlewoman..._ between you and you."

She stood up abruptly, checking her watch. "Gotta go." She leaned down and drew Sarah into an awkward shared hug, the bookend to the awkward shared waves when Sarah arrived.

"Keep turning tricks," Carina quipped cooly as she left. She did not look back but Sarah watched her go. Sarah glanced at the waitress, who looked apprehensive and jumped when the bell rang signaling Carina's exit. Sarah dug out more money and added to the tip

Hazard pay.

Sarah supposed she and Carina were still friends. But the friendship, layered and complicated as it had been from almost its first moment, had gotten more layered and complicated. Sarah had the feeling that she was unlikely to get more spontaneous confessions from Carina. Spy shields were locked in place; they probably would not come down again.

ooOoo

Sarah talked to her mom again that evening. Another short, clunky conversation that nonetheless made her feel better when it ended.

And the next day began another spate of inconsequential missions, a quick succession of busy spy nothings. But at least she was busy - not intensely enough to keep her mind occupied and her heart blank, yet it was a little better than sitting fidgety in her apartment. There was still no word on Bryce, no sightings after the one in Mexico. She began slowly to think of him less often. He was gone. She had to accept it. They were done, even if things between them had been left unfinished - at least from Sarah's point of view.

She stayed in sporadic contact with her mother. She and Carina talked by burner, but Carina, despite being the one who initiated most of the contact, remained as distant as she had been when she left the diner. Sarah knew that what she had called Carina had hurt her. But she also knew that Carina was hardening, becoming more thoroughly a spy. The cracks in her ramparts in the early days had been mortared shut. Sarah knew the process. She had been living it, at once hoping for it and dreading it in herself. She wondered how far gone she was.

She had been worried by and worried about her corpse dream. It was still hiding beneath her bed, crawling wetly out on a schedule of its own and oozing into her sleeping ear. As much as she hated it, as awful as it made her feel, she feared its cessation, too. Some part of her knew that if the dream stopped while nothing else changed, it would be because it had become a kind of reality, because she had succumbed, become a zombie with a gun, Graham's voodoo-doll killer.

Despite the missions, Sarah slowly began to feel like she was going to shake herself apart. Finally, Graham called and told her to meet him at his office.

She wanted the call; she dreaded the call. She got the call.

ooOoo

 _A handler? You have got to be kidding me._

So that was going to be the final indignity, the last exaction from her for her dared defiance of Graham. Sent scurrying to Budapest to do... _something_...for this handler, Ryker. Graham had actually been smirking as she left the office. Behind her back. He thought he hid it, but he hadn't, not completely, and a sudden backward glance from Sarah caught it before he wiped it away.

Graham had often kept her short on information until the last moment, and she had taken that to be him protecting himself, maybe sometimes protecting her. But this time, it was all about power: about making sure she understood that he had it and she did not. Ryker was running the show. She would dance to his tune. All Sarah could glean about the mission was that there was a 'package' to be retrieved. What the 'package' was beneath the euphemism was dark, a question mark. Graham had let nothing slip; maybe he didn't know. Perhaps Ryker was being given a long leash here, the kind of freedom _in situ_ that Graham allowed her on Enforcer missions. It was hard to imagine that Graham did not know; it would be out-of-character.

But perhaps his zeal to punish her had caused him to tolerate ignorance in this case. She suspected that he had suspicions about what it was, at least, and that his suspicions may have been responsible for him deciding to send her. _Errand girl._ Given Graham's desire to re-establish his control over her, she worried about the 'package' and what she might have to do for Ryker. Graham constructed control by deconstruction, by tearing down resistances or sources of resistance, razing them. What might he be planning for her to have to do, and how would it allow him to vise-grip her more tightly than he already did?

More questions. More questions without answers. But there were, presumably, answers in Budapest.

She pulled her suitcase aboard her flight and stowed it and the questions in the overhead. _Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof._ It had been a long time since Sarah had taken orders from anyone but Graham. She tried to prepare herself on the plane. She did not get nervous on missions, not since the earliest days. But she had a feeling...a feeling of impending...doom? Maybe not doom. Change. Yes, change. But so far, the changes in her life had all been...downward trending.

ooOoo

 _Okay, so Ryker is a bigger asshole than I expected. That's saying something._ Sarah had been in Budapest a short time when she realized that she was, in effect, Ryker's hired gun. That she was here to perform some death-defying task that Ryker needed to be performed but was either too much a coward or too unskilled ( _probably both_ ) to perform. He seemed to know her by reputation. 'Ice Queen' had peppered their brief conversations.

The time had come to retrieve the package. It was in a mansion, under heavy guard. Ryker was on running the op from a van. She had an earwig. He told her nothing about the package, but the equipment he provided her told a crucial part of the story: she was going to go into the Inferno. From the outskirts, into the center of damnation.

He provided her with two S&Ws, and a set of knives. In the dark and rain of a Budapest thunderstorm, in the van with Ryker, she outfitted herself, putting the knives in her boots, the guns in shoulder holsters. A cold certainty gripped her. Graham's point. To live, she would have to be the killer Graham wanted, to become that killer wholly. If she died, well, in a way, Graham's punishment would be that, her death. Either way, Graham would make his point. As so often, he had boxed her in. She was sure that Ryker would kill her if she refused, or that Graham would see that she was declared rogue and dealt with - summarily. _Don't think. Do the job._

She stepped out of the van. Her phone had a message. Her mom. Inviting her home. Telling her she had a home. _You can't go home again._ Ryker saw her. She put her phone away. They were a _go._

She stole into the mansion. Ryker guided her through its doors and hallways. Eventually, she heard voices, men, many men, and smelled the strong and strengthening odor of cigars. She made her way to a formal dining room, to its edge, and hazarded a glance inside, around a column.

There was a long dining table. Men were seated along its length, with one at its head, his back to her, and two standing on the far end. They were eating, drinking, smoking. The only advantage she had was that they were not on-guard. There was a darkling festive mood in the room, intensified by the flashes of lightning and the rumbles of thunder outside.

They had not heard her. They did not expect trouble. They did not look like spies. That all seemed peculiar to Sarah, but she had no time to consider what it might mean. She whispered to Ryker, telling him what she saw. "The men slaughtered the couple who lived in the house," Sarah saw them on the floor as Ryker related the fact. He told her to move; he expected her to pass through the men. Kill them all. _Do the job._

She stepped out from behind the column, one gun up. She shot the man at the head of the table in the back. His chair, tilted before she fired, crashed to the floor. Sarah moved to the table. She did not think: she acted and reacted, a zero-gravity ballet of gore and death. She shot most of the men at close range, using their surprise and various loose items on the table against them. Her guns recoiled again and again in her hands, each recoil getting an answer in the form of a scream, a gasp or a moan. And then the guns clicked, almost simultaneously. Empty. But there were still two men, armed with submachine guns. She crouched and grasped the two blades, one in each boot, and threw them, underhanded, behind her. She jumped from the table and landed as the two men fell, their guns blazing but uselessly, spraying the vaulted ceiling with bullets. She had no time to survey the carnage. Eleven corpses. She had counted before she entered the room, although what she counted then had been men. She had rendered them corpses. _Stop. Focus. Do the job._

"Next?" she asked. Ryker told her where to find the package. Grabbing a machine gun, she ran in that direction.

ooOoo

 _Oh. Oh. Oh, shit. The package? That's no package, that's a...baby. A baby? Ryker wants...a baby?_ Sarah looked at the little one. She was chubby, well-cared for. Expensively dressed, obviously. Fancy bedclothes. _Wait. She...belongs here. Her bedclothes match the mansion. This is her home. Her parents were the couple downstairs. What the hell is Ryker doing?_

She reported the package was…

"The baby is the package. Grab it and get out of there."

 _Grab it. It hasn't got a handle. How do I grab it?_

Ryker in her ear: "I'm your handler and that's an order."

She obeyed orders. The baby was the package.

She strapped the package - _the baby_ \- to her chest. She went back to the dining room and grabbed the other submachine gun. More men were coming. She marched down the stairs, each of her guns blazing. More corpses. So many corpses. But, in the midst of it all, somehow unaffected by the noise and death, a small, warm life against her, dependent on her to continue to live. She fought for the little girl. She fought for the little girl she had been, holding a 'talking' doll and pulling its string, wondering about mothers, mothering - about the fact that someday she could be one, do what her body by mysterious nature could do, give life. A thought long forgotten, now at the forefront of her mind, as her body did what by remorseless training it could do, take life.

She was out, then, with the baby. She dropped the guns behind a tree and ran, clutching the little girl more closely to her, until she could flag down a taxi. She got in and asked him to take her to a small hotel she had used years before on a lengthy assignment in Budapest. Once there, she paid cash for a room and hurried upstairs.

And then she was alone. With a baby. As the tide of adrenaline receded, she realized what she had done. She had taken the package, taken the baby. Ryker was going to be...unhappy.

As if on cue, the little girl began to cry. Sarah sat down on the bed and cried too, the horror of the evening settling on her as the adrenaline vanished. She was in a hotel room in Hungary with an infant. After a few moments, the baby stopped crying. Sarah did too. She looked into the baby's eyes and the baby looked back into hers. She felt something inside her move, break free.

 _Who am I? -_ A killer with a baby. A zombie with a little life.

* * *

 **A/N2** I decided to break this chapter into two. It was going to be too long otherwise, too busy. The next chapter, Chapter 19 "Blood and Talcum Powder (Part Two)" will be a kind of epilogue to this long, pre-Burbank section of the story sequence. Sarah. The baby. Emma. Graham. A new mission. Tune in!

(And, yes, for those of you who put together the epigraph and the final scene: _Shockabuku!_ )


	19. Blood and Talcum (Two)

**A/N1** The end of the pre-Burbank part of the story sequence. It is, as I said at the end of the last chapter, a coda of sorts to the pre-Burbank part of the sequence.

I thank folks for sticking out what was a series of sad chapters. Burbank will have its ups and downs, of course, but it will not be the downer these 19 chapters have mostly been. I will have more to say about how I will handle the Burbank part of the story sequence in A/N1 of Chapter 20. A few short thoughts about the pre-Burbank sections are featured in A/N2 below.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER NINETEEN

 _Blood and Talcum Powder (Part Two)_ :

 _Moses Basket_

* * *

Look at all the plans I made  
Falling down like scraps of paper  
I will leave them where they lie to remind me

From the past, a rumor comes  
Don't let it keep draggin' you down  
Throw the memory on an open flre  
You'll be free

Roll back the tombstone  
Let the saints appear

Roll back the tombstone  
Make a new man out of me

\- Crowded House, _Tombstone_

* * *

Sarah had no idea how to even hold the baby. Or how to feed it. Or how to... _anything_ , really. She called her mom. She couldn't explain exactly, but her mom didn't press. She just made suggestions. Talked about caring for Sarah when she was little. _(Was I ever this little, this new, this innocent? What happened to that little girl?_ ) In the midst of Sarah's panic over caring for the baby, she wondered what had happened to her in the past few hours. She felt...different...strange. She shook it off, grabbed the phone.

She called the desk and asked if one of the employees could run an errand for her. She told them that the airline had lost her baggage, and, so, many of the things she needed for the baby. The man at the desk seemed skeptical, but it was not the sort of place where guests were questioned. He told her that the things she had requested would be delivered as early in the morning as possible, shortly after the shops opened. But the formula and diapers - he would find some that night and bring them to her. They were, obviously, a necessity.

The formula and diapers arrived and Sarah managed to feed the little girl. And change her. That was...frightening. She wrapped her up in a large, soft towel from the bathroom and she got on the bed, putting the little girl alongside her at first, then turning to her and gathering her near. They slipped into sleep, simultaneously.

ooOoo

Sarah woke from a deep, dark dreamlessness - woke to a gentle, gurgling sound. Cooing. She was disoriented. She had not had the corpse dream; she had gone to sleep, sure that she would. But instead she had slept, really slept, like a dead woman - but not like a woman dreaming of corpses. Her mind crept toward the night before, touched the carnage she had wrought the night before, barely touched it, before fleeing it, like a small child playing _It_. The carnage had not disturbed her sleep. _How? Once I started having it, I had the dream after getting wet, after wetwork. (Other times too, but always, always then.) And that, tonight, was a horror show. The wettest I have ever been._

 _Blues always follow red. So much red. Red._

 _That dining room had been a killing floor, that mansion, a slaughterhouse. Red._

The baby began to make crying noises, and Sarah forced herself to get up, feed the baby and change her. She looked at her phone as she tried clumsily but successfully to burp the baby. Messages, many messages, all from Ryker, demanding to know where she was, the location and state of the package.

There was a knock at the door. Sarah grabbed her S&W. She heard a voice from the hall, a woman.

"I have things for the little one." English but with the right local accent. Sarah hid the gun and opened the door.

The woman who stood there was in her early sixties, probably, with heavy red lipstick and a horrible dark wig pulled down over visible wisps of gray hair. Even with the lipstick and the wig, her eyes and smile were kind. She had a Moses basket in her hand, filled with baby things. Sarah invited her in with a quiet motion. The baby had fallen back asleep on Sarah's shoulder.

The woman carried the basket into the room and put it on the bed. She went back out into the hallway and came in with a black baby carriage. She looked a question at Sarah and Sarah shrugged. She had an idea how to use it, although she would leave it behind. The Moses basket would suffice for travel. Sarah realized then that she had no intention of letting Ryker have the baby. Sarah was unsure what Ryker had planned, but her intuition was sounding internally like a fire alarm.

While the woman unloaded the items, Sarah stepped into the hallway, the door open, and called Ryker, telling him she would meet him with the package. She wanted to know what Ryker had in mind. Sarah was able to get the woman to agree to sit with the baby for an hour or so while Sarah went to meet Ryker.

The meeting with Ryker revealed just how dangerous he was to the baby. Sarah was glad for her ruse, glad that she had met with him. She needed to get the little girl to safety. Sarah had escaped Ryker, but she knew he would not stop searching.

Graham called as Sarah faced another night with the baby. It was the first time he called her in person since her defiance of him in his office. His voice sounded weird... worried. He started talking and Sarah realized that he really had not known exactly what Ryker had in mind. She'd been shipped off to do Ryker's bidding (a convenient punishment) and Graham had not known exactly what that was. He had acted without all the information. Perhaps whatever had been distracting him was still distracting him?

From what he said it was clear he knew about the carnage at the mansion. It was clear too that he now knew what the package was. Had whatever it was that kept Graham distracted from the past months made him sloppy in choosing her punishment? Too hasty, too sloppy? Maybe he was really just worried about this all blowing back on him in some way. But it did not matter. Things between them felt different. Changed.

 _Graham taken in_. The manipulator manipulated. Their relationship had now altered for good. What she knew about his manipulations, what he had allowed to happen to her: she might Enforce for him again, but her days as _his_ Enforcer were gone. Her days of blindly obeying his rules were gone. Her eyes were open. He was her boss, yes. She would do her job. But his _personal_ _authority_ was finished. Her seventeen-year-old's submission to him in the San Diego trees had carried on for years, but no more.

Graham wanted to know if she had the package. When he explained what would happen if she were to give the package to the CIA, Sarah knew that was little better than giving her to Ryker. She told Graham she did not have the package. He agreed to believe that and ended the call. And ended an era in Sarah's life.

ooOoo

Sarah had arranged a circuitous route out of the country. It was exhausting for her and for the baby, but there was no way to avoid it. Part of the problem was that she needed to secure identification for the baby, and so she rented a car and drove into the Hungarian countryside, to the house of a man she has used for such things before, but always off-book, never mentioning who he was to anyone. It was pure luck that this had all happened in Budapest.

She thought it likely that Ryker had not been told enough about her or her missions (she had been in Hungary for Graham, as his Enforcer) to know she had a 'home-court advantage'. She was going to use it for all it was worth. She not only got a passport for the baby but a new one, another one, for herself. The man arranged for plane tickets from Debrecen. It all cost a fortune, but Sarah had money, plenty of it. She spent a day there while the papers were prepared. She tended to the baby, cared for it, and slept when the baby slept; she took the baby on a couple of short walks in the nearby woods. The next day, she drove them to Debrecen.

They arrived shortly before their flight. The passports were successful, they boarded. The flight took forever, with layovers in Munich and again in Toronto before they landed in Atlanta. Once there, she rented a hotel room near the airport and she and the baby were able to sleep. She drove from Atlanta to Birmingham, and they flew from there to California. Another rental car (a Porsche - Sarah could not help herself) and a long drive with a wailing baby and increasing excitement and dread: they arrived at Sarah's mom's address.

Sarah shut off the Porsche. She had not talked to her mom, warned her she was coming, had told her nothing about the situation. Had she called ahead, she might have lost her nerve - for the visit and for the life-altering request she was about to make of her mom. It was early evening, just getting dark. Lights were on inside. Sarah had parked in front of the house, on the street. Emma was home; Sarah saw her walk past one of the windows. The baby had finally fallen asleep, allowing Sarah a silence for the final few miles in which to collect herself.

She got out of the car, careful not to slam her door, and she got the baby out of the car seat wedged in the cramped rear. The baby continued to sleep. Sarah carried her to the door and, blowing out a breath as she closed and then opened her eyes, knocked softly on the door.

ooOoo

Sarah's mom opened the door. She stood, staring blankly at the tall blonde in a black leather coat, partially obscured behind a baby and its blanket. And then her eyes flicked back to Sarah's face, to Sarah's eyes, and Sarah knew she knew.

"Sam," her mom breathed, recognition and prayer commingled. Sarah had a momentary out-of-body experience, the woman before her somehow distant and close all at once, absent (but remembered) and present (now seen). Sarah felt numb, voiceless. _I am Sam._

And then her mom was against her, sweeping her and the baby into a hug, encircling them in warmth and joy. "Sam!"

"Mom." _At last. I find you and, if you agree to what I am going to ask, I will lose you again._ "It's me."

ooOoo

The baby, exhausted, slept in the Moses basket beside the couch. Sarah sat on one end, Emma on the other. There had been a lot of tears from Emma. Sarah had managed to stay stoic, afraid to cry for fear that not just the exhaustion and horror of the past few days would surge from her, but for fear that the exhaustion and horror of her life would. She did not want to burden her mom with all of that. Especially not with what she was about to ask. She fought back tears.

Sarah began slowly, not explaining anything in detail, but making it clear to her mom the enormity (and, strictly, the illegality) of what she was proposing. The paperwork she had done in Hungary was amazing. The man was an artist and a computer genius. They had the documents necessary for Emma to take the baby on as her own. Emma did not blink when she understood what Sarah was asking. She agreed immediately. But she asked for Sarah's help figuring out how to explain what had happened. It helped that Emma was right on the phone about being closed - while she was not friendless, she was not part of any large social network and was unlikely to generate questions among many people by taking in a baby.

The story was that the little girl was the daughter of a distant relative, with no one else to take her in. Emma was in the process of adopting her, after having been named her guardian in the relative's will. After they settled all of that, Emma asked about Sarah, about her 'international relations' job. Emma's eyebrows scare-quoted the phrase.

Sarah plunged in, making herself talk fast so that she would not stop to think about what she was doing. She told her mom most of it - the cons with her father, the constant travel, the CIA, the recruitment, the missions. She left out the specifics about the cons, the missions )the wetwork, the seductions). She told her mom about being Sarah Walker. About Bryce, whatever they had had, and the subsequent months of silence.

Perhaps Emma intuited more about Sarah's life than Sarah told her ( _I got that gift from her,_ Sarah realized), intuited more of the truth, the specifics, but she did not let on or ask. She just opened her arms and invited Sarah in. Sarah slipped into the hug and fought back her tears again. But she let herself settle for a few moments in her mom's arms, a small girl again.

ooOoo

Sarah and her mom put the baby down in Emma's bed, tucking her in by wrapping her in a blanket much as Sarah had wrapped her in a towel the first night. Then Emma fixed the couch for Sarah. Emma left the room and Sarah stretched out on the couch, pulling the soft blanket over her. She was bone-tired. The trip. Her life. It felt odd not to have the baby with her, but she knew it would be best for her to adjust to Emma. Sarah was about to drift off when Emma came in, carrying in an old, ratty blanket, blue and frayed.

"I made sure the baby couldn't roll off the bed. I wanted to give you this."

Sarah looked at it and then at her mom. "Bumby? You still have it?"

"You remember, Sam? I mean: _Sarah_. I kept it. Some nights I slept with it, like you did as a little girl. It made me feel close to you. A blanket with a name. Do you remember the time I washed it and hung it on the line? You stood beneath it, holding one corner in your pudgy fist, bawling." She spread the small blanket over Sarah and bent down and kissed her. Sarah lost the battle with tears at last, but her mom stayed with her until the tears were done and sleep came.

ooOoo

The next morning, Sarah got up before anyone else. She put on her clothes and moved silently into Emma's room. She and the baby were asleep. Sarah took Bumby, her old blue blanket, and put it around the baby.

"This is yours now, little girl. All this is yours." She tiptoed out and got her keys. She was on the porch when Emma caught up with her, the baby in her arms. They talked emotionally on the porch, Emma almost breaking down, Sarah too, about all that they had missed, all that Emma had missed giving to Sarah. Normal things. Sarah asked her mom to make sure the baby got to have all that she missed. All the normal things.

Sarah climbed into the Porsche and looked back at her mom and the baby on the porch. At the normal life she had missed. She earnestly wanted it for the baby, wished for it with all her heart. She turned the key in the ignition. Her eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror and she saw herself, looked into her own gaze.

"One thing you will never be, Sarah Walker," she observed to herself aloud, her voice quiet and resigned, "is normal."

But as she drove away, whatever it was inside her that broke free in Budapest asserted its freedom anew, and, asserting it, found that its freedom felt like hope.

ooOoo

Sarah met with Graham in his office. He did not ask about where the package was. Sarah knew she had hidden it well. The baby - Molly, her mom was calling her - was safe as long as Sarah stayed away. She had reclaimed her mom only to give her to Molly. But giving Emma up felt better - _sad, sad_ \- than having her taken away, or losing her. And while Sarah had not given Molly life, she had given her a life. That felt... _good_. She felt better than okay for the first time in a long, long time.

She told Graham she was through with handlers. He knew she meant Ryker - and _him_ , Graham. He told her he had a new mission. He handed her a file. She opened it and saw a picture of a man, about her age, with brown eyes and curly hair and a crooked, unselfconscious smile.

 _Well, at least he won't be a challenge._

* * *

 ** _End of Book One: Sarah vs. the Spy Life_**

* * *

 **A/N2** End of the pre-Burbank story sequence. Next time, Burbank and Chuck. Chapter 20, "The Lonely Are Such Delicate Things".

Thoughts, reactions? Review?

A few final, pre-Burbank thoughts.

Sarah/Carina: I take canon to insist on their differences, and on the complicated nature of their friendship (complicated in part because of their differences). Sarah was not _like_ Carina before Burbank, except that they had, in a way, the same job. They have very different ways of being-in-the-spy-world. Sarah is not a volunteer, she is a conscriptee. Carina (despite the troubles of the past I have given her) is a volunteer. Sarah lives out (to use a term she supplies Chuck at one point) a long ' _existential spy crisis_ '. Carina is a stranger to such a crisis. Sarah tries not to live out the crisis; she tries to settle into and will the spy life for herself, but it never quite works. Carina knows that. (More on Carina and the spy life to come - when she gets to Burbank.)

Sarah clings to her professionalism so doggedly because it supplies her with a focus, a way of understanding and evaluating herself that allows her to 'deflect' from the task at which she is so professionally competent. Carina clings to the comparative freedom and lawlessness of the spy life. For Sarah, the spy life has more rules than Calvin's Geneva. For Carina, it has virtually no rules at all - except not to fall in love (the one rule she likes).

Unfinished business: We still have unfinished business with Amy and Gaez, of course, a story to tell about them. And we have unfinished business with Bryce, as does Sarah.

The final vs. the Baby scene between Sarah and Graham is a serious continuity knot. It makes little sense as a prelude to the pilot. I have tried to alter it enough to make it fit a little better, to unknot it. (In general, the Sarah/Graham relationship of vs. the Baby is odd, as is her being given the Budapest mission and a handler. I have tried to 'place' those oddities too.) I have tried also to show that the latent 'immaturity' in Sarah's relationship to Graham (part of what Zondra was reacting to when she told Sarah that her phone conversations with Graham sounded daughter/father) has become patent to her and that she has rejected it.


	20. The Lonely (One)

**A/N1** Welcome back.

This is the beginning of what I am now thinking of as Book Two in the story sequence, the Burbank sequence, the Chuck sequence (not that Book Three will not be crucially concerned with Chuck, too.)

Canon is well-trodden. I have no desire to tramp all over it again. Part of the point of Book One was to open up new spaces or new angles on canon. I am going to begin to exploit those.

It is important to remember that canon is really told from Chuck's POV. It is not exclusively so told - we are made privy to scenes that Chuck does not witness. But we don't get many such scenes really, and most of the ones we do are still presented 'as-if' from Chuck's POV, not only because of the way they are told and situated, both physically and narratively, but also because we, as the audience, have been habituated to seeing and feeling from Chuck's POV, and we carry it with us despite his not being present in a scene (i.e., we see what happens in terms of its impact on Chuck)

But I am obviously working from Sarah's POV. That means things change, not just in their details, but in their aspect. ( _Compare Jastrow's Duck-Rabbit.)_ The center of gravity in certain scenes will shift. I will often be interested in quiet moments as Sarah tries to come to terms with what Chuck and Burbank are doing to her. Sometimes these will be quiet moments alone, as in this chapter (mostly told as a flashback, so we are back to two kinds of scene-break), sometimes these will be quiet moments on cover dates with Chuck. We are shown (only bits of) a few of those in canon. I will take us on a few as Book Two unfolds.

I was able to construct an overarching plot of sorts (Graham's manipulations) in Book One because I had room in which to maneuver. Here, in Book Two, I do not have that room. That means that the plot will be almost wholly centered on Sarah and her changes, how they happen, how she understands or (often) misunderstands or denies them. The dominant conversations will often be her internal conversations with herself. Because of that, I do not plan for Book Two to be as long as Book One. I am going to pick my spots, tell the story from 'luster to luster' (to borrow a phrase from Emerson). We will skip across canon like a stone across a pond.

I have tried to present the events of the final story of Book One, "Blood and Talcum Powder", as changing Sarah and as leaving her ripe for more change. Her horizon brightened. Now the sun is about to rise. But, of course, our heroine will not quite realize what is happening...

I have been humbled by reactions to the story. I thank you for the reviews and PMs. Please continue to provide them. As I said back in an A/N to _Omaha_ , storytelling for me is a communal act, not a solitary act, and it loses its meaning for me when I get no response from others.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

 **Book Two:** _ **Sarah vs. Sarah**_

* * *

CHAPTER TWENTY

 _The Lonely Are Such Delicate Things (Part One)_ :

 _Strong Enough?_

* * *

I have a face I cannot show  
I make the rules up as I go  
Just try and love me if you can  
Are you strong enough to be my man?  
My man

\- Sheryl Crow, _Strong Enough_

* * *

Sarah was sitting on the bed in her Burbank apartment. She was still trying to get used to it, to the idea that she was _located_ , located in Burbank for the foreseeable future. Of course, her situation could change: she could be ordered away, she could be killed on a mission, something could happen to Chuck. He could be put in a bunker, he could be taken, she or Casey could be ordered to kill him. Kill Chuck. Kill him.

Kill him. Those were the words stuck in her mind from her first few days in Burbank. Well, those and a few others.

* * *

She had arrived in Burbank in a state of complete emotional confusion. Budapest, the baby, her mother, Graham, Burbank, Charles Bartowski - and then, Bryce.

Graham had given Sarah a few minutes to look at Bartowski's file, although she had mainly just looked at the picture, and then his tone grew grave. He was explaining how Bartowski had come to be of interest. Because Bartowski was sent a computer program - _did Graham say 'Intersect'? -_ and he had been sent it by Bryce. By Bryce Larkin. Double agent. An attack on a government facility. Explosion. Bryce shot. Bryce shot dead. _Dead_. But not before he sent the program to this Bartowski.

Bryce shot. Bryce shot dead. _Traitor_. Dead. Sarah could not quite get her mind to focus. Graham had stopped talking and sat watching her.

She felt...nothing. Nothing. Not yet. Months of silence from Bryce. The disappointment, the anger. Now, this. She felt...she would have to wait. Sadness would come. She knew that. But she forced that recognition back, forced back the nothing she now felt, and made herself focus, her mind focus, on Graham. He watched her find her way back and, with a small frown of commiseration, he went on detailing the mission.

She was to go to Burbank. Flight ready. Car to be provided. Find Bartowski. Find the program. Correct what Bryce had done. Fix it. Fix what Bryce had done. Bartowski not an agent, a civilian. Her mark. Do whatever she needed to do to find the Intersect.

 _Bryce is dead._

She had wrestled with that thought on the plane. It had been a possibility all along, one explanation of why he had vanished without a word. A not-unheard-of fate for a CIA agent, to die alone, unlocated and unmarked. Summarily shot or knifed. To be left in cold obstruction and to rot in some forgotten foreign nowhere. That Bryce was dead was all along a possibility - but Sarah had never believed it. She believed he was out there, somewhere, spying. That he might have become a double-agent seemed far-fetched, but the evidence was clear. Graham was convinced. And now Bryce was gone. Not just gone from Cabo, or from Sarah's life. No, he was gone. _Full stop_.

She tried not to dwell on it, on the circumstances of Bryce's disappearance. But she failed. Bryce had been acting strangely for a while. Sarah had taken it to be her - or _them_ , the Andersons. She had thought that maybe he was unhappy about the fact that she wanted more than the Andersons, or that he no longer even wanted the Andersons.

But maybe he was already being recruited or had already been recruited. Maybe that had been the problem. Maybe he had to leave. But what comfort was to be found in the thought that he had not betrayed her, but had rather betrayed his country? Each took him from her. She so wished she had been able to talk to Bryce one more time, to sort out what was and was not happening between them, and maybe what was happening with him. She had missed him but she had also been haunted by the lack of closure, the fact that they had ended with an ellipsis, not a period. _Can you end with an ellipsis? I'm not sure…_

She felt tears come to her eyes but she willed herself to stop. No time. No time for Bryce. For reckoning with his death. She had a mission, a real mission - the first in a long time, and the mission had to take precedence. That had not changed. Maybe her relationship with Graham had changed, but she was still the trouble-shooter, the Enforcer. She did not belong to Graham, but, given her life, she belonged to the CIA. She had a job to do. _Do the job._

She was a professional, all professional. The little personal life she managed over the years was always a disaster: most recently Zondra and Bryce, but even Carina, to an extent too. She sucked at the personal, at relationships. She needed to accept that, accept the loneliness that was entailed by her job, her past, her peculiar set of 'successes' and failures. The only thing that made sense was to put it all behind her: her mom, her dad, Gale and Robert, Zondra, Bryce, Molly...everyone. It was time to become what she was, a spy, nothing but a spy.

She now knew she had been holding something back from the job, some secret part of herself that she had kept hidden, hidden from her dad, from Graham, from cons and spying, hidden from herself. Most importantly from herself. She had hidden it so well she had not known it was there until the moment with the baby, before Molly and Emma. She had been able to hide that part of herself by keeping it in solitary, chaining it up. It had broken free and it was running through her, along her nerves and her veins, in and out of her head and heart. She was never going to be able to be nothing but a spy as long as that small part of her remained at large. Luckily, Burbank should give her the time she needed to capture it and to jail it again. Though Graham thought the mission urgent, Sarah did not expect it to be difficult.

ooOoo

The _mark_ , Charles Bartowski, _Chuck_ (she picked up the file) was, as she thought, her age. He was a real-life character from a bad sitcom. From a fraught home, missing parents, raised by his sister. Smart, brilliant, really. A scholarship to Stanford ( _Bryce_ ) but expelled for cheating. She flipped back to the photograph. _He doesn't look like a cheater_. He was employed, if you could call it that, at a big box store, a Buy More. No girlfriend, although there was one serious relationship in his past. That was surprising, no girlfriend. He seemed to Sarah to have a certain charm, a certain warmth, even in the photograph, but perhaps he was one of those rare people who looked _better_ in photographs?

The unwritten judgment of the file was: _loser_. But she knew the unwritten judgment of her file would be: _damned killer._ CIA files were not the Book of Life, though, despite her living for years as if they were. The final judgment was not in Chuck's file, or in hers, although she had no idea how to avoid her file's judgment being the final judgment on her.

She closed the file, closed her eyes. _Chuck._ Mort. _Ground Chuck._ What a silly coincidence! His charm, his warmth - maybe that was just her transferring her memory of Mort and his restaurant onto the mark. And he was her mark. She never allowed herself to feel anything for marks or for assets. That was an unbreakable rule, a line she would not, had never, crossed. No reason to let a photograph and a coincidence of naming cause...complications.

ooOoo

Once on the ground at Burbank, she claimed her rental car, a Porsche ( _Graham's apology?_ ). Equipment of the sort she normally requested was in the rear - including weapons. She went to the hotel that had been arranged and took the time to shower and to work on her makeup and hair. This Chuck had evidently not dated much, if at all, in a long time. Calling what she was about to do a seduction seemed almost to be a joke. Sarah was not vain but she knew the power she could have over men when she was not trying - and she was about to try. She arranged her hair in soft waves, applied a little makeup carefully. She put on an outfit that was flattering but not too much. She wanted to attract Chuck, not intimidate him. She guessed that he was not much for public displays, by himself or by a woman who interested him.

She left the room and got in the Porsche. She had been texted information by an analyst at Langley, who had accessed Chuck's Buy More schedule. He was supposed to be at work. She drove to the Buy More and checked her appearance in the rearview mirror. She might never be normal, but for this Chuck, for this mission, she was going to try to be.

ooOoo

He had fixed her phone. He had dropped his when she walked up. She was used to having an effect but that was something else again. He had been singing - actually singing - in response to something a co-worker said as she approached. He had looked up at her and as his eyes met hers, she felt the dynamic between them, the expected dynamic, shift, shake.

She was good at this, at manipulation; she had done it with hardened criminals, enemy spies, brilliant, wary men. Except for once, out of exhaustion, she had never really failed, never thought that there was any moment when she was not ultimately in control of the situation between herself and the man. But Chuck looked at her with absolutely no agenda. None. He responded to _her_ ; she had not made a mistake with her hair, her makeup or her clothes. She saw him see her as beautiful. Still, there was no angle, no attempt to achieve an end. He did not stop at her appearance, her flirty overture, her deliberate smile. He saw all that and saw past all that without trying - because he was not _trying._ He just saw her. _Her_.

Because he had no agenda, was playing no angle, her cover was...useless, invisible. Without an agenda, playing no angle, he offered her no handle, no way to grab hold of and control him. She felt an abyss open beneath her feet. Then he smiled at her, and she felt herself warm as she fell. The dynamic did not just shift, shake; it shattered. She was a girl in front of a boy. Not naked, of course, but not hidden behind a cover. _She_ was standing in front of Chuck. All these years, asking herself who she was and never getting a straight answer. And this guy, this tall, curly-headed man with the easy smile, saw straight to her. He knew who she was even if she did not. All these years chasing herself, and a guy in an untucked shirt and crooked tie ( _someone should straighten that_ ) conjured her out of nothing.

She was present. He was a gift.

Then the spell broke. A man with a ballerina - the man's daughter - walked up and then Chuck was not looking at her. And she was just a spy again. The fall stopped. Or slowed. Or something. She watched him turn the girl from disappointed and awkward, to beautiful and free. _Some kind of enchantment._ She left her card and she exited the Buy More. She had to go. She was flushed and disoriented.

She had no idea if he would call her. _I hope he calls me. Wait. Wait a minute._ The mission. _Right, the mission._ The mission might fail before it began.

 _What the hell had just happened?_

ooOoo

Later, she had tried to just steal the program, hoping that Chuck had not seen it or, if he had, that he had made no copy.

Once she was outside the Buy More, after her initial visit, her self-control returned. Most of it, anyway. She hoped he would call. For the mission. But then she was not sure. Maybe it would be better if she could just take the program from him if he had it, find a way to avoid seeing him again. Finish the mission without really making him her mark. But that attempt failed. Chuck and his co-worker - Morgan Grimes - had interrupted her thievery. She would have to see him again.

He did not call. She had looked at her phone over and over, flabbergasted and disappointed. She knew she had looked right, attractive, normal. And even if the flirting had ended, or gone sideways, or whatever it was that had happened, she knew she had affected him.

She went back to the Buy More to see him and the abyss opened again. She felt the same weird, warm freefall. But she got a date with him.

And that was the next problem.

A date. She knew it was not a real date. He believed it was. But she knew it wasn't. She did. _Don't I?_ But as she started to prep for the date, it seemed real. She had never been on a date, so she could make no comparison. But her heart was...fluttery. She felt keyed up, excited, but not as she did on missions, not adrenalized, not hyper-aware, not on edge, not dangerous. Just excited. And warm, again, warm all over. Of course, she did not dress as a normal girl dresses for a date. Gun, knives, hairpins dipped in poison. Slight deviations from normal. So maybe it was not a date. _It is a date._ It was a mission.

The phone rang. Graham, of course.

She had told Graham she could fix this before her second Buy More visit. Since finding out about Bryce, she had felt an odd sense of responsibility for what Bryce had done, as if his going rogue were somehow her fault. Graham had made no such suggestion. But Sarah felt the failure as one that was close to her; she wanted to fix it. But she also realized she had wanted to see Chuck again, bad idea or not, just _because_ , just to see if he would affect her again. He had. Same as before.

Graham gave her the conditional kill order as its target knocked on her door. Her target, her mark. _My date._ He was standing there, looking at her again. Again, boy and girl, girl and boy.

 _Kill him_. That was what Graham told her to do if he ran. Could she do that? Could she execute that order? She looked at Chuck. _No_. _If he runs, I will let him go. But I don't want him to run; I want to go on this date. Besides, if he runs and I let him go, Graham will send someone else. There is nowhere for him to run. I don't want him to run._ Mission.

ooOoo

He took her to a Mexican restaurant. It was nice. Sarah expected to have nothing to say, as usual, and she worried about that, since normally she could only find something to say when she truly adopted her cover - she had discovered that at the Farm, and in Leipzig - but she was finding that impossible. He made it impossible.

He made her forget who she was pretending to be. He made her forget to pretend. He made her forget. She was just there, with him, eating and chatting. Mostly listening. And laughing. Her face hurt, literally hurt, from laughter. He was so funny. Spontaneously, self-effacingly, funny. Clever, quick. Keeping up with his mind thrilled her, even as it left her mentally breathless. In and out, up and down, circling back: his mind moved constantly. Sarah loved to laugh. But her life had squelched laughter, and it brought her into contact with no one who was funny like this, like Chuck was funny.

But then she had a frightening thought: one reason he was so funny was that he had a gift for seeing the distance between who people were and who they wanted to be, or wanted to pass themselves off as being. That was a dangerous gift in relation to her. It meant that if she could adopt her cover around him, he might be able to see it for what it was, see the distance between it and who she was ( _even if I can't see that distance most of the time_ ). But if she could not adopt her cover around him, then she would be exposed to him, unable to do anything about this feeling of falling, falling warm, that she had everytime she was with him.

"I like you, Chuck." _Shit. What the hell? I opened my mouth and I spoke. Not the cover. On a mission, I do not speak through my mouth. Except now, I guess. He is a mark, Sarah. You may have to kill him. You cannot like him. I do._ She could not like him. She liked him. She could not kill him.

She felt her hand slowly moving toward his. _No. Don't touch him. That will be a disaster. He is a mark. You've just met him. You've been given permission to kill him. Don't touch him. Don't let him touch you._ She put her hand in her lap, then grabbing the seat of the booth to give it something to hold other than Chuck's hand.

 _I'm lonely. That's what it is. This has happened to me before - in different ways. So lonely I react too quickly. But it has never happened with a mark. Maybe I have lost my edge. Maybe Budapest and its fallout were too much. He seems lonely too. I know he has a family, his sister, and friends, but still...he's lonely too._

The conversation, the meal, moved on. A mission in her head, a date in her heart. Her first real date. _He thinks it's real, feels it's real. I feel it is too. I know it's not. Don't I? No. I know it is not supposed to be real. But I can know that and it can still be real. It is real. My first date. With Chuck. Bryce and I never dated. We worked and we slept together. We were a mission-couple._

She told Chuck she had baggage. _What a stupid thing to say._ He was her mark. This was supposed to be about him, not about her, not the real her. But the real her insisted on sitting in that booth and moving Sarah's mouth. She kept speaking through it.

Chuck offered to be her baggage handler. The way he looked at her. His eyes held hers, a promise. A promise of holding, of being held. She wanted this man to hold her. He couldn't handle her baggage though. _I have an order to kill you. I have followed such orders many times. You do not realize that body bags are among my baggage. I am a killer, not a date._

 _I am a killer on a date. Please, handle my baggage. Wait - I thought I was through with handlers? Is Chuck my handler? What's the mission? Me._

 _Maybe he could handle it. He's not the loser the file suggested. He seems...strong. Not like most of the men I've known, strong but unbendable, hard and brittle. Self-insistent, demanding. All backbone, no heart. No, he seems...rubbery. Hearty. Good word, Sarah. Strong like a thick rubber band. Given his life, he takes things and snaps back. He doesn't break. Maybe he could handle my baggage. But I can't handle my baggage._

The meal ended. Chuck wanted to take her to hear a band. That sounded so...normal. Her friends had done things like that in high school. But she knew almost no music except for the classical music she had played and listened to when she was learning the violin. She had heard popular songs on the radio, of course. But she could tell that Chuck _listened_ to popular music, thought about it, that it had significance in his life. Several times during the evening she had felt out of her depth, and a little out of her league, around him. This was another.

They got no chance to actually listen to the band. The spy life caught up with the date.

When she saw Casey and his men in the club, she thought the date was over. But even then she could not hold onto what was happening as a mission. She dragged Chuck onto the dance floor to try to gain some tactical advantage, and despite the fact that she did not lose track of Casey or his men, she danced _with_ Chuck, she danced _for_ Chuck. She touched him. Oh, yes, she did. Her liking was, it turned out, deeply colored by desire. She _wanted_ him. _Webster - 'animal desire'_. She had no business wanting him. None. _Mark_ , _my mark_. But she did want him, and _like_ him, and the falling feeling would not stop. Warm, warm all over.

She might have crossed a line if Casey and his men had not pushed the issue, pulled her back.

Graham had told her to kill Chuck if he ran. Now she helped him to run, and all she could think was: _Protect Chuck._ A car chase and a flight up a fire escape. She explained, told Chuck that Bryce was dead. She could see the shock, pain too, in his eyes. And then she figured it out. Chuck _had_ downloaded the program, the Intersect. Into his own head, his mind. He had it. He was it. She wasn't sure which. Casey was coming and there was no time to sort anything out.

"I'm going to point my gun at you, Chuck." Kill him. _Absolutely not_. _I'd rather shoot myself._ She pointed the gun, the red dot moving around on Chuck's body. She asserted her claim on Chuck. He was hers. Casey could not have him. She finally steadied the red dot. On Chuck's heart. She had taken aim at his heart. But she was not going to shoot him.

Then Chuck put it together, his 'flashes'. A bomb, a hotel, a general. Casey believed Chuck too. They rushed to the hotel and Chuck saved them all. Not Sarah. Not Casey. _Chuck_. With a computer and a virus from a porn site. The falling sped up. The liking deepened. The desire ran hotter. She made herself ignore it. Casey was there. The NSA was going to try to take him. But she would not give him up. She would keep him. _Protect him, that's what I mean. I was sent to protect the Intersect - so, I am just doing my job._ The mission.

ooOoo

Chuck went to the beach. To think, obviously. Sarah followed. She had thinking to do too. She contemplated retreat. She could ask Graham to send someone else now that the assignment had changed, now that Chuck had shifted (even if he did not know or was not clear about it) from mark to asset. She did not want to be a handler. She had a sneaking suspicion she could not handle this man. He would more likely end up handling her, and she was done with handlers, although she had not envisioned a 'baggage handler' when she told Graham that. The smart play was to get in the Porsche, call Graham, and leave Los Angeles. Graham would find something else for her to do.

She sat and stared at Chuck as he stared out at the ocean. She felt like they were together, despite his not knowing she was there. She liked that feeling, as she liked him. The smart play. She had been sitting on the hood of the Porsche. She stood up and moved. But not away from Chuck. Toward him. She walked toward him as she had at the Buy More. She got to the end of the parking lot, concrete meeting sand. Nurture meeting nature. _Who am I?_ She still had no answer. But the question felt different to her now, less hopeless. She pulled off her boots and stepped across the line. Dawn arrived. She put her toes in the sand. She wanted to talk to Chuck. To sit beside him on the warming sand. She wanted him - _no, strike that, she needed him_ \- to trust her. The sun was visible above the horizon. The horizon, her horizon, felt farther away, broadened. _Who am I?_ She had a feeling that the man seated on the sand could help her with her question. Seeking his help was almost certainly a bad idea. Every professional instinct in her sirened at her, telling her to go back, retreat. _Run, for God's sake, run. He will destroy the rules that structure your life, Sarah Walker. What are you doing? The rules are all you have._

 _Maybe. Maybe not._ That part of her that was free walked toward the sun, toward Chuck, and she took her place beside him.

* * *

Kill him. That was not going to happen. She had, in a way, the opposite problem. Graham and Beckman (the NSA was not giving Chuck up) had assigned her the cover of Chuck's girlfriend. She was going to have to pretend to date a man she could not pretend to date. He would be at the apartment soon. They were going on their first cover date. Sarah was excited. She was scared to death. Was she strong enough to do this? To date him? To cover date him? Date him. He thought it was a cover date. She had to somehow keep him thinking that even while she dated him. Did that make sense? What in her life did, really?

 _Kill him. No. Date him. Yes, but dating him may be the death of me._

* * *

 **A/N2** A quiet beginning. The first cover date takes place next chapter.

It may seem that I have made Sarah too self-aware here. But my view is that she is always, at some level, clear or clear-ish about what is happening to her where Chuck is concerned.

The problem for her is not that her feelings for him develop slowly. It is not that her feelings for him are a complete mystery to her. It is that she will refuse her knowledge and her feelings, or try to (for complicated reasons). Sarah's so-called 'hot and cold'-ness is not to be understood as her being wholly 'hot' one moment, and wholly 'cold' the next (diachronically). It is rather that one part of her is 'hot' and another is trying to deny that 'heat' (is 'cold') at one and the same moment (synchronically). The question is always which of those parts is in control in the moment - and that shifts from moment to moment. (Self-division is the real cause here, not fickleness. Apparent fickleness is the effect.)

Here, in the first blush of meeting Chuck, the 'hot' part is in control. Tune in next time as complications set in, Chapter 21, "The Lonely Are Such Delicate Things (Part Two): _Who Am I?"_


	21. The Lonely (Two)

**A/N1** I always wondered about Sarah and Chuck's cover dates, the ones we know happened but did not witness. Here we continue from the last chapter with an imagined first cover date. It co-opts the end of Pilot and is preludial to vs. the Helicopter (and foreshadows its events - which is fine because I am effectively skipping the episode and skipping Tango too).

The thought of their first attempt to navigate these waters was too intriguing not to follow out. Two things: remember that there are ups and downs aplenty in canon. Also, remember that by bringing Chuck into her life, Burbank brings humor into Sarah's life, laughter. There will be some of that here, and more in future sequences.

Thanks for all the reactions. Love to hear from you.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

 _The Lonely Are Such Delicate Things (Part Two)_ :

 _Who Am I?_

* * *

My heart it races  
And my mind cannot catch up  
It's all over two places  
It runs through doors that should be shut  
My head's asking questions  
My heart's a determined dancer  
So when the music is over  
Will I finally get my answer?

\- Boy, _Into the Wild_

* * *

Chuck did not bring flowers. But he stood in her open doorway and looked at her, slightly guilty; she saw him clutch and unclutch his hands, as if he felt the flowers' absence.

He looked lost, uncertain. Sarah smiled at him reassuringly, invited him in. She turned, walking to her bed. She grabbed her leather jacket, put it on, and flipped her long ponytail out from beneath the collar.

"Where are we going, Chuck?"

She saw him panic. "I...uh...I don't have any definite plan.." Sarah quirked an eyebrow.

Chuck babbled on in response. "I wasn't sure we would actually, you know, go out...Not that I meant we would stay in...And not that I mean 'stay in' as a euphemism for...um... _Netflix and chill.._.which I guess is a euphemism for...you know...sex." He reddened so deeply that she thought he might burst into flame.

She giggled. Even babbling, he was interesting, he was funny. _Did I just giggle? A real giggle, not a seduction-class giggle. Control. I need to be in control. Of myself. Of him. Asset._

"Well, it would be a little early to pretend to 'stay in' don't you think? It would be best for the cover if we were out, seen by others. We need to establish ourselves, us." She went past him out into the hallway. He followed. He grabbed the doorknob and closed her door.

ooOoo

They walked to the elevator in silence. Once on it, Chuck spoke without looking at her. He kept his gaze focused on the descending numbers. "So, how does a _cover date_ work? I admit I've been worried about this all day. I haven't got much dating experience to call on." _That makes two of us, Chuck, me less than you._ "Do we just pretend to talk, you know, like extras in theater scenes, who just mumble 'peas and carrots' at each other, as if they were having a conversation?"

 _Peas and carrots?_ "No, Chuck, we will talk. We will also be affectionate," she saw his eyes widen so she added, "within _limits_. Hand-holding is a must. Hello and goodbye kisses, pecks, would be a good idea too. Some touches, all in bounds. But we don't have to worry about anything more - at least not for a while." His eyes, which had returned to normal, widened again, so she explained: "I just mean that if we have to do this for a while, there may be a time when we will have to pretend to...Netflix and chill. _Pretend to_ , Chuck." She felt a surge of desire as moving images came to her mind unbidden - and unclothed. She pushed them away violently, squeezing her eyes shut against them.

Chuck evidently saw it. "I'm sorry if the thought of even pretending that with me is...um..uncomfortable. I know this must be awful for...someone like you."

"Like me, Chuck?" She gave him a serious look.

"Um, yeah, like you. A CIA agent, and...well, like you. You must feel like the universe has played some evil trick on you." _You have no idea._ He smiled, but the smile was self-conscious, uncomfortable, and it made her uncomfortable. _The universe has played evil tricks on me. But you don't need to know that and I don't think you are one. I want this to go well._

"That's flattering, Chuck, but you have seen too many movies."

The elevator doors opened, and beneath the _ding_ Sarah heard Chuck mutter. "Yeah, but I have seen you, too." She let it pass.

They walked out the door of her building then he slowed. "So, all of Los Angeles is before us. What shall we do?" The sun was setting, late afternoon.

She turned to him, now at a loss herself. "You have to choose. I have been here, but never to look around, never to see the sights. _Different kind of sights._ She felt slightly sickened at her thought, mixing wetwork with Chuck.

She realized that she wanted to know more about him. _For the cover._ It would make protecting him easier if she knew more about him. "Since I am supposed to be new in town, take me someplace you like. It doesn't have to be grand or fancy or expensive."

"I'm guessing you have a file on me that tells you what I make at the Buy More - oh, and I guess I mentioned that the other morning on the beach, didn't I? I know how to impress the ladies…" He gave her a display of bouncing eyebrows that should have been ridiculous but that she felt somewhere other than her funny bone. _Maybe the jacket is too much. Warmer than I anticipated._

She led him to her Porsche. But when they got to it, she felt self-conscious about it. "Rental." No need to say that she had one of her own, or that it was being shipped out to her by the CIA. No need to rub his nose in his Buy More salary.

She could tell that he was...embarrassed by his place in life. Undoubtedly, he had expected something different when he headed off to Stanford on scholarship. And he would have had it, if not for the cheating scandal. Straight A's. But his academic record fell under suspicion because of the scandal, no doubt. For whatever reason, Sarah's intuition was decided. _Chuck is no cheater._ She wondered what he had expected, dreamed of, when he left for college. A great job, a loving wife, kids - a normal life. All things separated from her by a fixed gulf, by distances, gaps, and lines she could not cross. But cover dating him, doing things like tonight - that would let her pretend to be normal. Pretend to be Chuck's girlfriend. Get a glimpse of the life that life had denied her.

 _The universe and its evil tricks._ She should still call Graham and ask to be reassigned. Peeking into Chuck's life, pretending to date him - dating him - it was all a bad idea. She remembered a mission in New York. A mark had taken her to 5th Avenue, to Tiffany's, to buy her jewelry, hoping to bribe her to sleep with him. She shuddered. _I didn't. But I convinced him I would._ While the man was paying for a bracelet, Sarah had looked out the window. A homeless man was standing there, empty cup in hand, hoping for handouts, watching the transaction. He hoped for pennies. The mark was squandering thousands. Sarah now sort of understood the homeless man. She would settle for pennies from Chuck's normal world.

She looked up from the car, abandoning her memory, and studied Chuck. He was looking from the car to her and back again. Something was bothering him. Not just the awkward cover date, not just her expensive car, something about _her_.

She got in, deciding not to press it. Maybe he would work it out on his own. Her hope for the evening was to get to know him better. If she did, then maybe she could work it out if he did not. "So, where to?"

He directed her through a baffling series of turns, that ended near a park. Alongside the park, a lime green taco truck was stationed. She pulled into an empty spot and shut off the Porsche.

She grinned at Chuck. "You have a thing for Mexican?"

Chuck gave her his half-smile. "Well, growing up, tacos were something I could afford. Morgan found this truck. Best cheap tacos this side of the border."

"Is that their slogan?"

"Nah. They don't even have a name. Just 'the taco truck', but they make up for their lack of nomenclature with extra flavor." He got out and came around to her side of the car, opening the door for her. She was so surprised by the gesture that she just sat there for a moment, looking up at him.

"Sorry, I should have done that earlier. It...um...slipped my mind. But usually, I am respectful of women." He held out his hand and she took it, shaking her head at him. Their touch registered all through her but she managed not to look away, managed not to show it.

They got tacos and cokes and walked to a picnic table in the park. It was shady, isolated. Other than some mothers with small kids, and another couple or two, the park was not crowded.

They ate. Chuck was right, or Morgan was. The tacos were tasty. Sarah enjoyed hers so much that Chuck, without asking, got up and ordered them another round. As they ate, they talked. Or rather Chuck talked and Sarah listened. He was quick to open up to her, such a change from her world, the people she knew in it. He told her about his senior year of high school, applying to colleges, going stag to the homecoming dance. Morgan and other friends cycled into and out of the stories. Even when the stories were at his own expense, or even when they were sad stories, she was amazed by Chuck's ability to re-experience them, to find something redeemable in the bad stories, to find something funny in the sad ones. He believed, obviously and without needing ever to say it, that people were good, or at any rate, meant to be good. That being good was natural, not being good, unnatural. _And here I sit, the poster girl for the unnatural._ His confidence in that seemed unshakable. She knew he extended that confidence to her - and that felt strange and wonderful all at once. _You are wrong about me, Chuck, but it is so sweet of you to believe it so completely, to believe I am good. I want to be the woman you see._

Chuck's view was so far from the dark, fatalistic view her dad had repeated to her over and over, so different from Jack Burton's conviction that life itself was a confidence game, and the only question was whether you were the con or the conned. She still heard those lectures in her head.

A couple of times Chuck asked her questions, but she deflected them. The look he gave her at her car crossed his face again when she hesitated before a question the third time, but then he changed the subject before she could change it.

The sun had set as they finished, the moon just visible. Chuck asked if she would like coffee. She said she would. They got back in her car.

He gave her an address. Another series of baffling turns. Their destination was an old used record store that doubled as a coffee shop. As they walked in, the staff, an older man and two younger women, all looked up and said "Chuck!" more or less in unison. They all then looked at Sarah more or less in unison. And then they all looked at each other - more or less in unison. Chuck stopped and turned to her. "This is _Pressing and Grinding_. It's been here forever. The guy behind the counter is Jeremy. He owns the place. The two women," he nodded in the direction of the two brunettes who were still staring at Sarah, "are Jody and Jodi - one with a 'y', the other with an 'i'."

Sarah looked back at the women and they finally turned back to their tasks. "Because that's not confusing."

Chuck grinned. "At least they aren't all three named Michael Baldwin Bruce."

At first, Sarah thought Chuck was jabbing at her about the story of her boyfriend, Bruce, the one she told him at the Mexican restaurant. But she could see no hint of teasing on his face. "I don't get it," she admitted.

"Old Monty Python sketch." When she shrugged again, he put a finger in the air. "We must teach this one our ways…" He sounded silly, professorial. She giggled again. Chuck walked up to Jeremy at the desk. "Two coffees, Jeremy, sir, if you will. Is Listening Room three open?"

Jeremy nodded. "Yeah, Chuck, it's open. But if she is going with you, I'll have to ask you to leave the door open. My Listening Rooms are not co-ed." Then he chuckled and Chuck laughed.

"Jeremy, I'd like you to meet...my date, Sarah." _Not bad, Chuck. The hesitation even worked, since we are newly together. It sounded...real._

Jeremy put out his hand and Sarah shook it. "Good to meet you." He shot Chuck an approving smile. "So, you want me to suggest something?"

Chuck shrugged. "Sure."

"Arcade Fire? 43 minutes and change, longer if you don't flip it right away."

Chuck turned red again and shook his head. Jeremy gave him a conspiratorial wink. "Hey, this just came in today. In great shape. Devo, _New Traditionalists_."

Jeremy handed Chuck an LP with a slightly battered cover. Chuck took it into his hands and examined it. Jeremy poured two cups of coffee into chipped, mismatched mugs. He put the mugs on a tray designed like a large LP and sat it on the counter. Chuck handed Sarah the Devo record and picked up the tray. "Do you take anything in your coffee?" She shook her head. "Ok. This way."

He led her to the back of the shop. There was a narrow hallway and, down it, she could see three doors, each numbered 1, 2, 3. Chuck went down the hallway to the final door, 3, and opened it. Sarah could only barely hear music playing in the other two rooms. Inside the small room were two well-worn armchairs, separated by a small table. There was a turntable against the wall. Speakers stood on each side of it. Chuck motioned for her to take a chair. She did, resting the album on her lap. He put the tray down and handed her one of the mugs. As he closed the door, she took a sip of the coffee. Chuck sat down in the other armchair.

"Hey, this is good!" Sarah noted.

Chuck grinned, pleased. "Yeah, I can't figure it out and Jeremy won't explain it, but he makes the best coffee in town. I am pretty sure the coffee keeps the doors open, not the vinyl, although Jeremy is here for the music." Chuck started to reach for the album. Then, it registered on him where it was and he stopped himself, his hand extended halfway toward her lap. "Sorry. May I have your Devo?"

She smirked at him and handed it to him. He fiddled with the turntable and the album. After a few moments of random crackling, the synthpop drum thumped from the speakers. She watched Chuck listen to the opening of the song, and sing along with the opening line:

 _We're through being cool…_

"Say, aren't these the _Whip It-_ guys, the ones with the yellow hazmat suits and the flower pots on their heads?"

Chuck smiled. "That's right." His voice changed again: "So you are not a total stranger to our homeworld?" He had gotten nervous, there with her alone. He was cute. She smirked again.

He became more serious. "This is the album where Devo sort of canned the irony of their earlier records. I'm not a fan of the whole album, but this song….Morgan and I used to sing it at his house, blaring, after particularly...hard days in high school." He paused. "But I imagine high school was a blast for someone like you."

"Like _me_ , Chuck?"

"Like you. Homecoming queen. The girlfriend of the captain of the football team. Maybe yourself the captain of the football team. You." She wanted to correct him. _Hardly._

But he was her asset.

She was not going to tell him about her past, any of it. That was a rule she would not break, not relax. And, given his effect on her, if she started telling him things, she might never stop. And if he knew what she had done, what she was capable of, he would never look at her again as he had the first time. She was willing to endure a lot to be on the receiving end of that look.

She did not respond. He waited for a moment, turning the music down, an obvious invitation to her to talk. She then realized why Chuck had brought her here. Yes, obviously it was a place he liked, frequented. But he brought her here hoping she would talk. A soundproof room. So no one else would hear. A sudden fear gripped her.

 _We're through being cool…_

He looked at her as he waited and eventually she saw whatever she had seen earlier again, some shadow, darken his eyes. What was going on?

"Look, Chuck, I know this is artificial...odd. But we have to do our best with it. It would help if we could be friends, or at least friendly. Honest. So, tell me, is something bothering you? Have I done or said something that has upset you, bothered you?"

Strangely, he glanced at her hand, but he did not answer her.

The song played on.

 _If you live in a big place  
_ _Many factions underground  
_ _Chase down mister hinky dink  
_ _So no trace can be found  
_ _Put the tape on erase  
_ _Rearrange a face  
_ _We always liked Picasso anyway  
_ _Mash 'em!_

The lyrics seem to register on Chuck and his eyes darkened again as the synthesizer solo screamed away. Sarah made herself think about the lyrics she had just heard, recollect them.

 _Oh, God. No. I didn't think…_

"Chuck, am I in the Intersect?"

He looked away quickly and she knew the answer. But Graham had told her - she had asked - that she was not in the Intersect. Her file was secret, kept only by him, never made available to the Intersect Project. Why would Graham lie about that?

Why would Chuck lie about it?

"Chuck?..."

"No, you aren't…" Sarah felt herself start to breathe again. "But the ring you had on in the Buy More the other day, the blue one, it was in the Intersect…"

 _Ring? My ring. Did I wear that on missions? Did I? I must have. I wasn't there, in the Intersect, per se. I was there because of my ring. What did he see me do?_ She felt a shudder of terror; it turned almost immediately to anger.

"Whatever you think you know, Chuck, you don't know. Files can be faked. Video doctored. You don't _know_ anything about me!" She was overreacting. She could not stop it.

He looked hurt. "I never said I did. I just flashed. I didn't intend it or do it on purpose. It just happened. Maybe the flash was wrong."

"It _was_ wrong, Chuck. I'm going to the bathroom." Sarah put her coffee down and yanked open the door to the Listening Room, spilling music into the hallway. Devo was now singing another song from the album:

 _You got me lookin' up high  
You got me searchin' down low  
You got me, I know you know  
_ _You got me jerkin' back 'n' forth_

Sarah stomped down the hallway, cursing herself, cursing her blue ring, cursing both in time with the synthpop. _Shit._

It was true that Chuck was her asset. Protocol dictated that she know as much about him as possible while he knew as little as possible about her. To give him information would be to compromise herself as his handler.

But she knew that was not the only reason she had gotten angry. There was so much about herself that _she_ did not want to know, acknowledge, that she did not want to think about, remember. And she did not want Chuck to know it. Any of it. Not because he was her asset but...just _because_.

Because she liked the warm feeling she had around him. Because the thought of him knowing was worse than the thought of knowing herself. _I do know, I just refuse to know._

She found the bathroom. She splashed cold water on her heated face. She gave herself a minute to calm down. The door opened and one of the women came in. She saw Sarah and smiled. "Hi, I'm Jody, with a 'y'."

"Oh, right, Chuck told me about the name thing. I'm Sarah, with an 'h'."

Jody laughed out loud. "Ha! That's good. Well, Sarah with an 'h', good to meet you." She gave Sarah a hesitant look but then went on. "You are out with Chuck?"

"Yes. We're...dating."

Jody's face lit up "That's great! We all love Chuck. He comes by now and then to drink coffee and listen to music, chat with Jeremy. He's got a lot of old vinyl himself. I think he inherited it from his parents or something, but he likes lots of different music. He's really, really nice. Funny. Smart. Yeah, we all love Chuck. Especially Jodi. I don't think she is going to like you though."

Sarah's anger returned and switched targets immediately. "Oh, Jodi with an 'i' is interested in Chuck?" Sarah tried to keep her tone off-hand, casual. She did not quite succeed.

Jody nodded. "She has been for a while. But he had some kind of bad break-up in the past, and the few times she's tried to talk to him, he always brings _her_ up. Jill." _Jill Roberts, Stanford. From the file._ "We were all sort of shocked when he came in tonight with a date. Especially someone like you."

"Like me?" Sarah felt like she had asked that question before.

Jody's smile turned nervous. She glanced at the door.

"What do you mean, Jody?"

"Well, just that you don't seem his...type."

"What is his type? Brunettes?" A bit of acid crept into Sarah's tone and Jody backed away a step without realizing it.

"No, you're not...well, you're not _a nerd_. I guess we always pictured Chuck with one of his own...kind. I mean, I'm sure you are great. And, God! that's not a veiled way of insulting your intelligence. I just mean...well, look at you."

"A tall blonde can't be a nerd? Only short brunettes? Is there some kind of rule? A hair color or height requirement?" Sarah still sounded acidic, but she was actually becoming amused. One thing that had occurred to her since she had gotten to Burbank, met Chuck, was that she was a nerd too, but a _CIA nerd_. Not the standard nerd, granted, but still…From high above, so to speak, her life had a nerd-ish shape.

Jody was at a loss. Sarah threw her a lifeline. "It's okay, Jody, no offense taken. And Chuck: I don't know what to do about it, but I will tell you: I like him."

Jody gave her a wide smile. "I know. I could tell when you came in."

Sarah felt her pulse quicken. "Really? How?"

"It's just the way you stand next to him. Like you...I don't know... _fit_ there. And the way you look at him when he isn't looking at you..." Jody trailed off. Sarah was half pleased, half pissed. If Jody with a 'y' could see it, Casey would. Or Graham. Or Beckman. She was going to have to take herself in hand. She could not afford to be moony any more.

"Anyway," Jody continued, "I hope it works out. Chuck deserves to be happy." _I agree. But I don't know that I do._

The evening was now spinning the wrong way, like a record played backward.

Jody slipped into the bathroom stall and Sarah stepped out of the bathroom. She took a breath and walked back to the Listening Room. Chuck was sitting there, music off, putting the Devo album back in its sleeve. She watched him as he put the sleeve into the album cover. It took him a minute but he finally looked up at her.

"I'm sorry, Chuck. There are rules for handlers and assets. Information about your handler is need-to-know. There are things that I can't tell you, things I can't explain, things you can't know. You just have to accept that. Forget what you saw." Her tone was flinty. She looked at her watch. "C'mon, the date is over."

 _I need him to trust me. How is that going to work now?_

Chuck gave her a funny look before he spoke: " _Cover_ date, you mean."

 _What did I say?_ Date _. Damn it, Sarah._

"So, is this our first cover fight?" he asked, frustration and confusion in his tone. She wheeled and stalked out, left him in the Listening Room.

Eventually, he would catch up.

* * *

 **A/N2** Eventually…

Thus ends our first Burbank sequence. A prologue to Book Two. Tune in next time for Chapter 22, "Good Here". Carina blows into Snoresville.

Oh, I know I jumped the gun with 'Netflix and chill', which is not extant (so far as I could tell) until 2009. Forgive the anachronism.

Isn't it funny and fascinating how deeply thematic rings are in the show? We have a crucial appearance of one as early as the end of the pilot. Think of all the others - and, of course, The Ring. (And the show itself is a kind of circle...)


	22. Good Here

**A/N1** My _Book One_ obviously puts the Wookiee episode, the Carina visit to Burbank, under various and complicated pressures. I also rate Wookiee as one of the most important episodes in canon; it reveals much of what Sarah is really thinking and feeling about herself and about Chuck. But almost all of it is conveyed nonverbally or by means of verbal indirection.

Because of that, I am going to hew close to it here, and do more with its on-screen details than I will with most other canon episodes in Book Two. That forces me into more exposition of the episode than I would like. I have no plan to do this with any other episode, at least until we get to the end of the Burbank episodes, the finale. The chapter works toward a non-canon scene at the end, a conversation between Sarah and Carina.

Think of this chapter as the real beginning of Book Two; the last two chapters, as I said, were a prologue. I'm getting various things in place here.

My favorite repeated line of the show occurs in this episode for the first time: "I'm good here." I've used it as a title. That short line bears enormous weight across the show. Sarah says it to Carina and means it, as she does every time she says it. The line is always offered by Sarah in the face of an interpretation of her as 'settling' for Burbank or for Chuck. It is her brief but categorical denial that she is 'settling'. - If you want to know what Sarah 'settling' looks like, consider Shaw. (And we will later, as much as I wish we could avoid it.)

Thanks to _fezzywhigg_ for some PM conversation about these issues. Thanks too to David Carner for tireless pre-reading.

Thanks so much for the reviews and PMs. I think I am almost caught up on responses.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

 _Good Here_

* * *

And I said I know it well  
That secret that you know  
But don't know how to tell  
It fucks with your honor  
And it teases your head  
But you know that it's good, girl  
'Cause it's running you with red

-Bon Iver, _Blood Bank_

* * *

Sarah was enjoying herself.

If it hadn't been for three things, her enjoyment would have been complete.

She was at Chuck's apartment, playing _Likewise_ with Ellie and Captain Awesome. It was, in effect, a couple's game - or at least that had been Ellie's intention in suggesting it. It tested the like-mindedness of the players, the teams, the couples.

But that brought up the first of the three things: _Morgan_.

Morgan insisted on being the fifth wheel, second guessing her answers about Chuck, and giving her the third degree when Chuck gave an answer about her. It was not making her mad, but it was taxing her patience. Ever since their first cover date, and Sarah's angry retreat from the listening room, things between her and Chuck had often felt 'off'. He had grown suspicious of her when Zarnow had apparently been killed and had feared that she might harm Ellie or Awesome. That hurt her. Deeply. She wanted them to trust each other. But he mistrusted her. Maybe not for long, but he had, and the sting of it was still with her. Then he had disobeyed her, risked himself, and her hurt had still been fresh and her fear for him so great that she had exploded, making her earlier anger seem minor by comparison.

They had gotten through it, but now, when what she wanted to do was to solidify things with Chuck, settle into their cover relationship, Morgan kept gumming up the works. He was jealous. That would have been awkward enough, but Morgan's jealousy put Chuck under tension. Sarah knew why, even though Chuck had been careful not to say anything. She knew he wanted Morgan to leave them alone, that Chuck was doing everything in his power to find out things about her and that Morgan was compromising Chuck's efforts. _He sees me picking the olives off my pizza. He will remember that. He so wants to know me. But he cannot know me. I cannot let him._ Chuck did not want to hurt Morgan's feelings, but, even more, Chuck did not want to be put in a position where he was forced into a choice between Sarah and Morgan. It depressed Sarah, but she understood why: She could tell that Chuck feelings for her were real. _I should confront him. Tell him that having feelings for me is hopeless. But I want him to feel that way. Real. I do everything I can within the rules and consistent with the constant surveillance, to make him feel for me. Fall for me. Keep falling. I cannot stop myself._ But Chuck also knew - at least, he believed he knew - that their relationship was fake, and that Sarah could be gone from his life at any moment.

He was right about the last part, but not about the first, not exactly, not actually, not really. _Can't let myself think about that for long._ And so Chuck was torn between his apparently unrequited feelings for her and his long-standing friendship with Morgan. The game was constantly renewing that tension in Chuck. Sarah could feel it.

That was one of the three things. The second was Sarah's odd, nagging feeling that someone was _watching_ them, looking in through the windows, listening.

But that should have been impossible. Casey was supposed to be keeping watch, making sure the Intersect was okay. Normally, Sarah would have gotten up and checked herself, but she did not want to make Ellie or Awesome or Morgan suspicious, and she did not want to stop playing, did not want to stop interacting with Chuck.

She was having a good time, as she always did with him. She could not remember the last time she had played a game - maybe _Chutes and Ladders_ with her mom as a child? She had raced against Zondra, sparred with her. Sparred a little with Carina. That was as close to game-playing as she had been. She did not want to stop playing, to stop finding ways to get Chuck to smile at her. She was also finding out how much she liked Ellie and Awesome, and how at ease around them she could feel. She was welcome there - although a part of her knew it was all a lie. Still…

...That brought Sarah to the third thing: _lying_.

The game required Sarah to answer questions about Chuck. She could do that. He paid attention to her and she returned the favor. She listened and he shared. She also had his file. She was doing a convincing job of being an appropriately already-in-the-know girlfriend, sustaining one half of their cover. But the game also required Chuck to answer questions about her. But he had no answers about her, only questions. And so the only way they could sustain the other half of their cover was to lie, to pretend that Chuck was getting most of the answers right, when, as a matter of fact, he was not. _Although, his guesses have been disturbingly close to right a number of times. I should probably worry about that. Later._

But each time Chuck had not known the answer and Sarah had pretended that he did, she had seen the stab of pain and disappointment in his eyes, could see that he felt distanced from her each time, even as she sat next to him, sometimes up against him, touching him. She hated that. That distance. Hated that he did not know the answers. Hated that she was lying and that he knew it. Hated that she was making him participate in lies ( _I always do_ ). But there was nothing to be done. It was the way things were. Their relationship was shaped by asymmetries, substantiated by falsehoods. She wanted it to be somehow real, but she had the anti-Midas touch. Everything golden thing became leaden at her touch.

 _Proof that she had the anti-Midas touch_ : The answer to one of the questions was Bryce Larkin. _Shit, shit, shit._ So far, Sarah had been able to avoid much talk of Bryce with Chuck. He knew they had been partners, but she had refused to elaborate on that the couple of times Chuck had given her an opening.

She suspected Bryce had been on Chuck's mind more than he had been on hers. Ever since the beach, when she had asked Chuck to trust her, Bryce had been farther and farther from her thoughts. At least, in relation to her. But he did cross her mind - as he was doing now - in relation to Chuck.

Chuck had not said much himself about Bryce. Morgan provided Sarah with a better sense of the lingering resentment and anger Chuck felt toward Bryce, and Chuck's obvious insecurities about Bryce, than Chuck himself did, although she could have guessed from his behavior. She did not want him to know that she had been involved with Bryce, had been his _partner._ She feared his reaction to that. It would hurt him. Not because he thought he had some claim on her past, or was cultivating some illusion that she had no romantic past, but because it was Bryce, and because of Jill. She had to keep Chuck believing that she did not feel about him as she knew he felt about her, and if he found out about Bryce, he would think that Bryce was one reason for that. He would think he'd finished as runner-up to Bryce again. She hurt Chuck enough, often enough. She did not want to add that particular hurt to the ever-expanding list of hurts.

 _I make lists. I've been keeping that list. I hate it. I run through it at night, having to add to it almost every night, and there's nothing I can do about it. I am not only torturing Chuck, but I am also the very instrument of his torture._

Game over, she thought she had escaped the Larkin issue. Chuck walked her out. She felt close to him despite the fact that she dropped his hand when Ellie closed the door. _One cover for Ellie, another cover for Chuck._

She felt bad mostly enjoying an evening filled with tension and pain for Chuck, so when he made a cautious joke about accessing her file, she told him all he needed to do was ask. _He always gets me to do what I know I should not do, the last thing I should do._ She had expected some question about her childhood, and she was unsure whether she would answer truthfully or not, when Chuck asked her about Bryce, and about the exact nature of their relationship.

She lied. Not that the words she said were false, but they were deliberately misleading, in part because they suggested what Chuck wanted to hear, what was false: that she and Bryce had only a professional relationship, that they were not romantically involved.

That conversation slanted her evening to unenjoyment. She drove home wishing she had not offered to tell Chuck anything, that he had not asked, especially that she had not lied. Thinking about Bryce made the situation with Chuck seem worse. _In a way_ , what she told Chuck was true - but of course, not as Chuck understood it. She and Bryce had had a professional relationship, and, in a way, only a professional relationship: but Chuck would not see it like that and Sarah could not explain it.

ooOoo

Once home, Sarah got ready to take a shower. She needed to try to clear her head. As she turned on the water, the second of her three reasons returned: she had felt like they were being watched as they played _Likewise_. Now, she saw the intruder reflected in the chrome of the shower. It was not _they_ who were being watched; it was _she_ who was being watched. She slipped a bar of soap into a stocking hanging nearby, and she brandished the makeshift weapon as she was attacked.

After considerable damage to her apartment and a bloody nose, the intruder turned out to be Carina. _What the hell is she doing here?_

As they recovered their breath, Carina looked around the apartment, her way of looking around Burbank, and pronounced it boring. Sarah neither agreed nor disagreed. She knew Carina, knew that Carina - like Bryce, come to think of it - had a glamorized conception of the spy life, thought of it as fancy parties, beautiful gowns, and intrigue. Not that those were never part of it, but they were so often not. At any rate, Sarah's conception of it was not glamorized.

Carina told Sarah that she was in town to steal a diamond and that Sarah was going to help her.

ooOoo

Sarah went to the bathroom, shut off the shower, and wiped the blood from her face. She was happy to see Carina, and unhappy. Having Carina in town was like having her past in town. And there was no way of knowing what Carina might do or say. Sarah wanted to be in Burbank, wanted to be with the team - with Chuck and with Casey. Carina could make trouble for her. Sarah knew from some digging into Casey's background (she had checked up on him when she realized he was staying in Burbank too) and she knew that he and Carina had been...together...in Prague. That might cause problems. But Sarah's real worry was Chuck. She needed to make sure that Carina had limited, controlled access to Chuck. Very limited. Very controlled.

Sarah went back into the living room. Carina had straightened up some of the mess; she had made sure the goldfish bowl was full (it had been knocked over and the goldfish knocked out of it, but Carina had put it back during the melee) and she was standing, beer in hand, watching the goldfish swim. Another beer was open on the table. Carina picked it up and handed it to Sarah. They sat down.

"So, Burbank. I assume you won't be here for long?"

Sarah shrugged. "I don't know. The assignment is...open-ended."

Carina eyed Sarah. "Say, that crack about me wanting a diamond because I am looking to settle down...that was...low."

Sarah had not made the crack thinking about Carina's history, but she realized how it might have sounded to Carina. "Oh, I didn't mean... _that_. I was just joking."

Carina raised her left eyebrow. "Interesting, isn't it, that your mind goes there...to rings and settling down?"

"Now who's being low? I just made a joke, Carina."

"That's a little odd too, isn't it, Headstone? I think I can count on one finger the jokes you have made in the past. What's Burbank done to you?"

Sarah realized that Carina must have managed to slip past Casey, past the surveillance, and had been watching her, watching her and Chuck. "Nothing. But I am on a team here, a good one, and... I was just making a joke, Carina."

Carina sipped her beer. "So I hear that you and Graham were...on the outs for a while."

 _Spy gossip. You would think folks dedicated to the clandestine would know better_. "Yes, but we are okay now. We...cleared the air."

Carina waited for more but Sarah did not go on. So Carina sighed and spoke again, softly. "I also heard about Budapest, Headstone. Lots of spies talking about that, although no one seems quite to understand how or why it happened, what happened."

Sarah had not thought about Budapest much, almost not at all. She had forced it from her mind. Not the baby, Molly, but all that went into saving her. _I wish I could call Mom._ Now, hearing 'Budapest' and 'Headstone' together, it all came rushing back, in garish, splashy technicolor.

"Sarah, are you alright?" Carina's concerned voice brought Sarah back from re-living the death scene in the dining room. "You went pale. Sorry to have mentioned it."

Sarah took a moment to steady her hands and her voice. "Let's not talk about Budapest."

Sarah saw Carina recognize that she was done talking. She sipped her beer as Carina told her about her latest adventures.

ooOoo

Predictably, the next day, Carina began to try to figure out Chuck's role on the team. Sarah introduced him to Carina as an analyst. But Carina was not satisfied. She asked if he was _analyzing_ Sarah. Sarah thought she had a chance to explain whatever Carina might have thought she saw the night before, so she told Carina that their cover was boyfriend/girlfriend. But Carina was not satisfied with that answer. She did take a moment to tell Sarah she was sorry to hear about Bryce. She did seem sorry for Sarah, but less sorry for Bryce. Then she was out the door, on her way to talk to Chuck at the Buy More. Sarah's manager came in and delayed her attempt to follow.

The thought of Carina talking to Chuck filled Sarah with far more dread than she had anticipated. It was not just that Carina knew things about her, things Sarah did not want Chuck to know. It was not just that Carina could not know certain things about Chuck, his being the Intersect. It was that she knew Carina. Carina's question about Chuck _analyzing_ Sarah was not just idle curiosity. Given that Sarah's answer implicitly denied that there was anything between her and Chuck, that meant Carina would take it that Chuck's _analyst_ skills could be hers, to discover...and enjoy. Sarah had accepted that nothing happened between Bryce and Carina, but...Despite the momentary heaviness that the mention of Bryce caused Sarah, the thought of Carina's hands on Chuck caused her to find a quick escape from the clutches of the Wienerlicious.

She got into the Buy More in time. Carina was about to approach Chuck. Sarah stepped in between them. Sarah tried to distract Carina, but her gaze kept drifting to Chuck. Each time it did, Sarah felt more annoyed.

"This is _my_ team and _my_ op…" _Mine!_ _Mine? Why did I think of rings and settling down last night?_ Chuck interrupted them. Morgan wanted to go out with Carina. Chuck thought it was a bad idea, although, for Morgan's benefit, he was pretending otherwise. _That's a great idea: kill two lovebirds with one stone!_

Sarah jumped on Chuck's pretended request. Chuck protested, but Sarah set it up. Carina knew she had been outmaneuvered but Sarah could also tell that Carina believed the game was just beginning. It did not help that Sarah was not entirely sure what the winning-conditions Carina had in mind were.

ooOoo

"You guys are so cute! Really, you're like the cutest couple ever."

So gushed Carina, from her seat beside Morgan on the couch. Sarah was sitting on the arm of the armchair Chuck was seated in. Sarah was barefoot. As relaxed as she could be in this situation with Carina. But she was beside Chuck. That was good. Sarah understood Carina's new gambit. She was going to force Sarah and Chuck to act as a couple in front of her, in front of Morgan. Force them to tell couple stories, act like a couple. Chuck commented, with some hesitation, that they were doing good. The hesitation depressed Sarah. She corrected him: they were doing really good. _We are. Sort of. In our fake way. Anyway, I am as happy as I can ever remember being. Even if the happiness is not all it could be._ In the flush of warmth that came with that thought, Sarah reached out and caressed the back of Chuck's neck. His response gratified and saddened her. It was so deep and so real...and she could not take him somewhere and see what would come of it...

Carina asked how they met. Chuck coughed up an answer. "At work." Then Carina made a Bryce comment (though she did not mention him by name), about people dating co-workers. Sarah gave Carina a look, telling her to back off. But Sarah had to give Carina credit. She was pushing the right buttons. Carina wanted to know something about where Chuck stood in relation to Sarah's memory of Bryce (Bryce's memory) and so she was going to make Sarah contend with that memory while flirting with Chuck. Carina watched Sarah closely, had been watching her closely.

And then Carina began to touch Morgan. Sarah saw Chuck notice it. And she saw what it did to him. His response to her caress from a moment before - she could see he regretted it, its reality, against what he now saw, was seeing: Sarah's caress of him was no more real than Carina's touchings of Morgan. _It was real._ Carina effectively deprived Sarah's touch of its power, its power to communicate anything to Chuck.

When Chuck and Morgan went to the kitchen to serve the pizza, Sarah confronted Carina, sitting down beside her on the couch. She told her she did not need to be so handsy with Morgan. Sarah explained it as if she was concerned for Morgan. To a degree, that was true.

But she was more concerned about Chuck. More concerned that the amount of reality Sarah worked to keep in their fake relationship did not get drained away, taken by Chuck as mere appearance. _It's real, Chuck; it's just not real. I can't let it be real. I know it can't go anywhere, be anything...more...But can't I have this? Just this much? I don't deserve more. But can't I have this?_ _This shadow of something real? My abnormal version of normality?_

It wasn't lost on Sarah that her current situation with Chuck was the photo-negative of her past situation with Bryce. What she had with Bryce, such as it was, could have been real but was not. What she had with Chuck - _such as it is_ \- was real but could not be. If the rules (CIA-Graham, NSA-Beckman, Casey) were not in the way, if she would not endanger Chuck by allowing free rein to her feelings, still, she had nothing to offer him and no sense of how to live a life she wanted but could even not fully imagine. _How can you want what you can't imagine? How can you want something that scares you so much? Maybe I don't want it, maybe I am fooling myself._

Sarah stopped worry about fooling herself when Chuck answered Morgan's during-the-movie question about where Carina had been last. "Argentina!" Sarah prayed that Carina had not noticed, and she contained her own reaction, hoping not to bring the mistake to Carina's notice if she had missed it.

ooOoo

The next day at the Wienerlicious, Chuck was distracted, awkward. Sarah tried to talk to him, telling him about Carina, warning him. She told him that Carina could not be trusted. What she meant was that Carina could not be trusted on missions, could not be trusted not to create chaos. She did not really mean more than that. But Chuck seized on the line, taking it to mean that Carina was a liar.

Carina had told Chuck that Sarah and Bryce had been a couple. _Damn._ Chuck thought Carina was lying. But then he caught up with Sarah's struggling reaction to what he was saying. And, just like that, despite Sarah's attempt to deflate the significance of it, her predictable use of 'complicated', Chuck knew. Sarah felt herself coalesce with Jill in Chuck's mind as Chuck looked at her.

It was Chuck's turn to storm away, after he called Sarah a bad liar. _Damn. Damn. Damn._

Sarah sat in stunned silence. This was not good, not good at all.

 _Wait. Chuck was with Carina last night?_

 _What happened beyond the revelation about Bryce? Carina would not have gone to the trouble to lure Chuck to her hotel room to tell him something she could have shared almost anywhere, anytime. What else had happened in that hotel room?_

This was worse than she thought, worse than not good at all. _What happened?_

ooOoo

At Payman Alahi's Malibu compound, Sarah stood and watched Carina flirt with Chuck. Sarah had not been able to get him to respond to her since the conversation about Bryce. He had instead stayed close to Carina. That he was distancing himself from her was bad enough, but that he was moving closer to Carina - that was maddening.

Sarah kept trying to force herself to stay on-mission, but she could not stop watching the interaction between Chuck and Carina. Sarah circled by as the talked, just on the edge of earshot, and she heard Carina ask Chuck to trust her. Sarah's stomach clenched and for a moment she thought she might lose control of herself. But the mission came first. Sarah made herself give Carina the details of the compound layout, but then she asked the question that was driving her crazy, or at least the question that would lead to the question that was driving her crazy.

"Why did you tell him about Bryce? You compromised my cover." _Which cover do I mean? The one I aim at Chuck._ Carina tried to finesse the question, then turned it back on Sarah, telling her to keep her professional and private lives separate. She walked away.

Sarah tried to slip back into the cover she aimed at Chuck. She went to him and asked how he was doing. He answered but without much responsiveness. The three of them walked around the side of the compound to the rear. Carina decided to press the issue; she picked the lock to the door. Chuck watched and then, smirk in his tone, he observed, "So...I guess if this was you and Bryce, you'd be breaking into the bedroom, huh, Sarah?"

The question cut her in several directions at once. It was bad enough she had to worry about Carina's improvs, but Chuck seemed determined to sulk, and she had no idea how to respond to that. She felt guilty; she began to get angry. She told Chuck now was not the time.

Carina kept pushing the mission. They were supposed to be doing recon. Carina had a device on her that allowed her to open the locked door leading into the room when Alahi kept the diamond.

They had just begun to examine it when Alahi showed up with two goons. Sarah immediately fell into a routine, Vacuous Blonde Number One. Carina joined in the ruse and Chuck, smoothly enough if not smoothly, managed to play along too. Carina introduced Chuck as her and Sarah's brother. Alahi, now taking there to be no interference or competition for the two beauties, gathered them in his arms and began to talk of the diamond.

Earlier in the day, Sarah had felt herself coalesce with Jill. Now she felt herself coalesce with Carina.

The look on Chuck's face (Sarah was watching him, not Alahi) was eloquent. She knew now what Carina had tried the night before. Carina had tried to seduce Chuck; now Chuck was looking at Sarah, taking her to be joining Carina in the seduction of Alahi. Given what Sarah meant by 'seduction' that was true: but not given what Chuck meant by it; she was not helping Carina to do to Alahi what Carina had tried to do to Chuck.

Alahi did not help when he slipped his hand onto Sarah's backside after staring at her lecherously. But the damage was done. _Mission. Stop worrying about what Chuck thinks of you. This situation could escalate. Then Chuck could end up dead. Better he thinks I am a...Better he thinks whatever he thinks than that he be hurt or killed._

She allowed Alahi to continue groping her with his eyes and hands, but managed to move him outside of the room in which the diamond was kept. She did not want to allow that to continue while Chuck watched.

Carina, as Sarah dreaded, improvised again. The alarms sounded. Sarah knocked Alahi out and then she, Chuck and Carina began a crazy, careening dash to the beach. Sarah used her comm to tell Casey to meet them there.

Given that Carina had the equipment she needed to break into the house and into the room with the diamond, Sarah should have seen the next step coming. She intuited it before it did, but too late. Carina asked for the diamond - she would "take the heat". Sarah understood. Carina was lying; she wanted the diamond for herself, and that was not how Graham and Beckman wanted this to go. Sarah told Chuck that Carina was lying.

The word was no more than off her lips when she knew it was a blunder.

She tried to explain, to tell Chuck that she had warned him. But he was not listening to her. He was listening to Carina. He tossed Carina the diamond, while throwing her own lies back in Sarah's face.

Within seconds, Carina was out of her dress and on a waiting, remote-controlled jet ski. She was gone. She left Chuck and Sarah to take the heat. Pretty clearly, Carina was not entirely over Sarah having called her a whore in Pakistan. She had planned all of this, and it was an orchestrated professional - and personal - humiliation for Sarah. As Carina intended.

Casey arrived in time and they were able to escape. But Sarah could not escape the anger and the humiliation. And what felt like a betrayal. Not by Carina, but by Chuck. As she too often did, she let herself go and yelled at him.

"I need to be able to trust you on a mission, no matter how you feel about me personally."

 _I asked you to trust me. You did. Until now. Until you found out about Bryce. No, that's not quite right. You did until I lied to you about Bryce. After the mess with Zornow, I told you that you should trust me, not believe me. But I can only lie so many times, and only about certain things, before your not believing me becomes your not trusting me._

 _And you trusted Carina over me! You chose Carina!_

Carina called. She told Sarah not to be mad.

"But you left us to die."

"I knew you'd get out of it."

The maddening thing was that Carina did take herself to know that. She knew Casey was there. She had heard Sarah tell him to meet them on the beach.

But more than that, Carina had seen Sarah in action, particularly when they were in Russia, in that barn full of weapons. Carina had calculated the risk and expected Sarah's team to get out.

Besides, the humiliation would have been less sweet if Sarah had died. Carina called to gloat, to get a little of her own back after their exchange in Pakistan.

Sarah should have seen it all coming.

ooOoo

Sarah tried to contact Casey. He had gone after Carina, using an NSA phone-tracking device. But she could not get an answer. Sarah left the Wienerlicious and crossed to the Buy More. She entered and she saw Chuck. She smiled to herself against her will. They needed to straighten some things out, but he never failed to make her feel better, even when he annoyed her. That was probably significant, but she pushed it down, explaining to Chuck what was going on and that he was 'benched' as a member of the team.

At Carina's hotel, she found Casey in a compromised position, the victim of Carina's seduction skills. Sarah had no more than taken a picture of Casey - blackmail potential if she needed it, but mainly for laughs - when Alahi, his golden gun, and goons crashed in. Chuck called a few moments later. He had the diamond. Sarah told him carefully to have Carina bring it to the hotel.

After the call, Alahi handcuffed Sarah and led her out of the room, leaving Casey handcuffed to the bed as Sarah had first found him.

ooOoo

Sarah was waiting in the lobby when Carina showed up. Showed up with Chuck. Sarah was more pissed than she had been all day - and that was saying something. Why would Carina bring Chuck along?

 _Because he's the reason she's here! He talked her into saving me._

The anger drained out of Sarah. She could tell that Carina was no longer angry with her. Pakistan had finally been dealt with. And the feeling of hope she had trailed behind her to Burbank returned, stronger than it had been since the end of the first cover date. _After everything, Chuck came to save me._

Together, Sarah and Carina managed to turn the tables on Alahi and his men. Chuck got away, and got away with the diamond. Carina would not be able to use the diamond to mount any higher on the DEA ladder, but as Alahi and his men were taken into custody and taken away, that did not seem to matter to Carina. It turned out to be a huge success for the team, the team plus one. Graham and Beckman were very happy. Chuck was in good spirits.

Maybe Sarah and he could put Bryce - and Sarah's lies about Bryce - behind them. She hoped so, anyway. After all, Bryce was gone. He could not be a problem again.

ooOoo

Casey and Sarah said goodbye to Carina. Sarah left the apartment complex.

Or it seemed that she had. She instead waited for Carina next to the street.

Carina seemed to expect to find her there. "How about a ride to the airport?" Sarah agreed and they got into the Porsche.

ooOoo

"So, Carina, what were you talking to Chuck about?"

"I asked him to come back to my hotel room. Again." Carina clipped the words off, matter-of-factly.

Sarah nodded slowly. "And why would you do that?"

"Well, because, as I told him, he's sort of cute-ish." Sarah's slow nodding continued.

"You asked him back... _again_? Does that mean that he had been there already, or that you asked him already?" Sarah tried to keep her tone non-committal.

Carina sighed. "Both."

"Why would you do that...why would you do either...after Bryce?"

"For the same reason that I showed Bryce more of what he was staring at. I wanted to know if I could take him from you."

"Carina!"

"No, _Sarah_. Understand me. I did not want to sleep with Bryce. You were sleeping with him. I don't _take_ what my friends _have._ If he had accepted my 'offer', he'd have gotten nothing from me. You should have known that from the beginning."

Sarah shrank a bit. "I was just so unsure about him, about us, Carina. I...overreacted. I seem to do that. But you...I take it you propositioned Chuck." Sarah's words were vaguely accusation and question all at once.

"Yes, Sarah, I did. In my most fetching, lacy-red bra and panties. And he didn't give me a second look, even when I went in for the...kill. He just talked about you, babbled about you, really. He managed to say your about fifty times in ten seconds."

Sarah felt a surge of warmth but she went on with the questions. "What if he had...taken a second look."

Carina gave Sarah a frank shrug. "I don't know. It was clear that _you_ weren't sleeping with him…"

"Clear? How?"

"Well, you implied that you weren't, when I asked if he was analyzing you. And I saw you two on the double-date. You both want to have sex so bad it's killing you…"

"He's my...asset...Carina. I can't say any more. And since he is…"

"I know, I know. Lists and rules. _Ice Queen_. And bosses, I am guessing. Other team members. But the fact that you _won't_ or _can't_ surely doesn't mean you don't _want_ to? You may be trying to hide it from yourself, but you can't be entirely successful. You want to. You badly want to."

Sarah did not respond to that. Quiet, nothing but the whine of the Porsche's engine. Carina looked out the window.

"So, would you have slept with him if he'd been interested? I mean, given...everything…?"

"Well, Headstone, I don't take what my friends have. That doesn't mean I won't take what they _want_. I've said that to you before, back in our CATs days. Besides, it might have been for the best."

" _What_? Why?"

"What are you doing to that guy, Sarah?" Sarah glanced at Carina, then quickly away from her. "I saw you touch him; I saw him respond. (He did not respond to my full court press the way he responded to your touch.) But he doesn't know what's real and what's not. And, Sarah, any man who can sit untempted in front of me when I am in that particular underwear, that man must be pretty far gone."

Sarah huffed. "Sure of yourself, aren't you?"

Carina laughed good-naturedly. "I'm good at induction, not just seduction." Her tone changed, grew serious. "Look, Sarah, Chuck is in love with you. Do you understand that?"

Sarah's had to slam on the brakes. She had nearly barreled into the car ahead of her. It had stopped for a light and Sarah had not noticed it.

Carina turned and looked at her, her eyebrows both raised. "Well? Do you?"

Sarah was silent again.

Carina shook her head. "Here's what I know. He's in love with you. He hasn't said the words to himself. Probably terrified to say them.

"That spat about Bryce, obviously there's a backstory there I don't know. But he was hurt when I told him. It was about Bryce, sure, the.. _.fact of Bryce_...like that 'breaking-into-the-bedroom' comment….But it was the _lie_ that did the real damage." Carina let that comment sink in for a minute.

"I heard what you told him outside his apartment, back on the first night I came into town. I was outside his apartment. Snuck by Casey and his bugs. I know you lied to him after you invited him to ask a question, after you basically _offered_ to tell him the truth."

Sarah's hands were strangling the steering wheel.

"Are you being fair to him? I tried to give him a heads-up, you know, about spies and falling in love. I tried to tell him you won't ever tell him the truth. Hell, Headstone, I have told you...things...but you've told me, _me_ , almost nothing. You should at least tell him this is hopeless. You should let him go. Unless…"

Sarah did not look at Carina but she did finally speak. "Unless...what?"

"Unless you...more than _want_ him...Unless you have honest-to-God feelings for him." Sarah stared at the road ahead.

"You are a spy, Sarah. A rather...special...sort of spy...with a special skill-set. I saw his sister (was it?), her boyfriend (right?) in the apartment. _Wholesome_. _Nice._ Do you think there's a place for _you_ there? That the sister and her boyfriend would welcome you in their home if they knew...if they knew that you were a CIA agent, much less if they knew you were...Graham's Enforcer? Would they play _Likewise_ with an executioner?"

"You can't tell them the truth. They wouldn't want to know it. You and Chuck are meeting tonight to talk, right? More pizza? Tell him that it cannot happen. Don't cite the rules, don't use Graham or Beckman or Casey. Just tell him that _you_ , Sarah Walker, are not interested, not at all. Because your behavior is not sending that message, Sarah. The boy is not imagining things, is he?" Carina's voice softened. "If you want to sleep with him, do it. Take what you want. He'll do anything you ask. But if you want, if you _need_ , something else, something more, ask yourself if there is any chance you'll be given it. Is there?"

"What airline are you on?" Sarah asked instead of answering.

ooOoo

Chuck was at her door with a pizza. He was expecting to be dressed down, even though the mission had turned out well. She could see the expectation, the dread, in his eyes. He began to apologize to her. _He is apologizing to me. How do things between us always get turned around?_ He told her it made sense, her and Bryce. Bryce always got the great girls. _Jill, me. He's still thinking us together. But he's trying not to._

He then told her that he just wanted to know one real thing about her.

It was not much to ask. She had offered it to him the other night. Now the things he listed - her name, where she was from, and so on - it was a list of the things she'd expected after _Likewise._

She did not know what to say. What could she say? _This is hopeless. Why do I keep hoping?_

Her middle name. He would settle for her middle name. She wanted to tell him. She owed it to him; it would be a form of apology.

But she heard Carina in her head. _I can't tell him the truth. Is there any place for me here? If I answer, I will just keep him stuck to me, in this restless Limbo that I've trapped us in. But I invited him to ask. And I did not answer before; I lied._

She was so lost in her own head that she missed him give up, move to get napkins.

 _He loves me. I can't have him._

Her voice was very small, like she was speaking from a great distance, across some fixed gulf.

"Lisa. My middle name is Lisa." The truth.

* * *

 **A/N2** _Oof,_ as David Carner might say. Tune in next time for Chapter 23, "Lou/Incident/Bryce (Part One): Goldfishing".

Wookiee is, formally, a beautiful episode. (The execution is, predictably, often slapdash.) The bookends: Sarah offering to tell Chuck something but then lying/Chuck asking to be to told something, then missing it-and the importance of truth, lies, and trust in between the bookends….Very nice. YS's non-verbal gifts are on display throughout.

I have a brief May 2017 essay on "I'm good here" (under that title) on my blog, if you are curious to know more of what I think about the line. (Blog title on my profile.)


	23. LouIncidentBryce (One)

**A/N1** I am portraying Sarah's interior life as deeply conflicted and paradoxical. I have not done that accidentally or mistakenly. I warn you that here I make it worse - as bad as it will be in the story, perhaps, until the end of the Burbank episodes. (The specific character of the conflict and paradox will be different there.) Despite the fact that some of what is coming in the other chapter(s) in this sequence is painful, like some of what is in this chapter, it will all add up to a net gain for Sarah. We are heading toward the changes in their relationship that characterize Season Two. But we have some ground to cover before we get there.

We are back to two different scene-breaks. This chapter is layered both temporally and thematically. I assume my reader is familiar enough with the relevant episodes to make sense of times and events.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

 _Lou/Incident/Bryce (Part One)_ :

 _Goldfishing_

* * *

A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

- _James_ 1:8

* * *

 _Limits._

 _And goldfish._

Sarah was musing over limits. Lines. Barriers. Boundaries. Containers. Bowls. Jails. Her goldfish was swimming to and fro in his bowl. She was watching.

Chuck's freedom was muzzled. He was under constant surveillance. Goldfish.

Hers was among the pairs of eyes surveying him - she was sometimes the one who kept watch on Chuck, when, for one reason or another, Casey could not.

But she hated doing it. She wanted to be part of Chuck's life, part of his _private_ life so much, and being forced to sit and watch it play out - or at least a version of it play out, since Chuck was normally mindful of the surveillance and so mindful of what he did and said - it was like staring through glass into a world she wanted to join but could not.

Chuck was the Intersect.

She thought about that rather infrequently, really, since he was _Chuck_. She was interested in _him_ , not that goddamn, blessed program. _I hate it for him, but it keeps me here._

True, she had a professional interest in it, since it was often either the source of their missions or a crucial tool. And, in Chuck's head, it was a powerful force for good.

But Sarah suspected that had more to do with Chuck than the Intersect. On its own, the Intersect was just a _thing_. Whether it was good or bad was a matter of who was using it, and why. Sarah remembered Jack Burton: _Listen, darlin', everything has two handles, one that's good and one that's bad..._ Of course, her dad went on to turn that wisdom into crass con cynicism, but it was wisdom. _Two handles_. Chuck, because he was Chuck, held the Intersect by the good handle. Sarah had seen plenty of the spy world - she could imagine what the Intersect could do when held by the bad handle.

Chuck was the Intersect.

Because he was, Sarah could stay in Burbank, a place where, despite everything (the trials, the little miseries) she was happier than she had been, had ever been. But, because he was the Intersect, Sarah was forced into living within limits, behind lines, in containment. She was his handler. If she violated protocol, they would find him another. She was the first choice, yes; but she was not the only choice. They would replace her.

And developing feelings for her asset was a violation of protocol. So she could not let them know she had. But that was hard, because whatever it was she was feeling, it was so strong, stronger than any feeling Sarah had ever known. It kept her pressed against the limits. Pressed hard against the limits. And, as strong as it was, the feeling was also so natural, so right, that it was easy to forget that it was forbidden. So the feeling that should have delighted her and been a delight to Chuck was instead a torment to them both. Or it would have been if Chuck knew about it.

She worked to keep him from knowing as she worked to let him know.

Sarah dropped her head. She remembered the poisonous truth serum and the aftereffects of the question Chuck had asked her when they had both been dosed with it.

He asked in effect if they were real. Sarah struggled with real.

* * *

They managed to get the antidote. Chuck handed her a vial and had one himself. But he stopped her before she could take it.

He asked her.

He wanted to know if she had real feelings for him or if what he felt was what he felt, alone. He asked if there was any chance that they could become _something._ She froze for a moment. _Bryce and I weren't something, but weren't nothing. You and I are something, but I have to pretend we are nothing, Chuck. I have to. Or I lose the something. I can only have it for so long as I convince you it is nothing._

"No," she answered.

* * *

Had she lied? Yes.

And no.

At bottom, the problem for her was simple and utterly terrifying. When she thought away all the complications, the Intersect, her status as a CIA agent, - when she thought away Graham and Beckman, and even Casey (despite the fact that she was coming to like him and trust him), - when she tried to imagine herself and Chuck together, unencumbered by the spy life and the government, she drew a blank. Warmth and hope, but still, a blank. She had no idea how to exist in the real world, how to be a real girlfriend. Mrs. Anderson, she could do. Chuck's real girlfriend? No idea. None. A perfect and absolute blank. Like trying to find your way using the Bellman's Map. ( _High school lit class_.)

Did that mean she did not want to imagine something? Did not want more than a blank? No. But she needed time to figure it out, to empower her imagination, to contend with her past. Time to grapple with the future. She had never done that. She had never thought she had one, and so she had not wasted time wondering what she might want from it.

* * *

"No," she answered.

She saw Chuck shatter, saw pieces of him drop to the floor, land wetly, bleeding.

She had pulled the trigger, threw the knife, injected the poison: she was the Enforcer again, terminating the target.

But this was not some face known only in photographs. This was Chuck; the dearest of faces to her, and she was killing him. Killed him. He tried to cover it - tried to cover how badly her denial of anything under the cover hurt him - but she could see it, the raw pain behind his eyes, funding the self-deprecating smile. She could see it, and she was causing it. He took the antidote to the poisoner's poison, but he had no antidote to hers.

The dream she was killing was hers too, even if she did not know what that dream was, how to populate it in her imagination.

That night, she had the corpse dream for the first time since she met Chuck. She had gone without it for so long that she had almost forgotten it. When she woke up, she cried in her apartment. Chuck would not love her anymore. She had killed it.

 _A zombie with a "No."_

She had gone to work, rattled and stumbling, stiff-legged, only half-aware of her surroundings. She was prepping the Wienerlicious for opening when Chuck came through the door. She felt warm immediately. She had thought it was done. They were done. That she had killed the something they had by telling him it was nothing. She felt enlivened, quickened. Chuck seemed oddly excited, pent-up. _Thank God! But why is he here? Why so focused? Oh, no! Oh, yes! He's going to tell me. He's going to tell me he loves me. That would be awful. What can I say? Especially after yesterday. That would be wonderful. The most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. I will live with the consequences._

And Chuck broke up with her. Or fake broke up with her. Or really but fake-ly broke up with her. Or... _Fuck it._

Chuck left. Sarah trailed behind him, helpless to stop herself. He went to the sandwich shop.

The one run by that Lou girl.

He went in and sat down and started a conversation, started having coffee with her. _Bitch! She's drinking my coffee. Mine!_

But Lou could have a real conversation with Chuck. She could tell him about her family, her childhood, her job, her feelings. She could touch him without pretense. She could have something with Chuck and she could acknowledge it as something. Lou was a real girl. _I'm a zombie._

Heart stopped, she stumbled back into the Wienerlicious.

* * *

A real girl. A real girl.

That had been on her mind since the breakup. She had felt the breakup coming, heard it warning sounds early, like drums afar off. She had tried to prevent it. Desperate, trying to hold onto the something/nothing that she had with Chuck against Chuck's own frustrations and then against the threat of Lou, she had engineered spending the night at Chuck's - to solidify the cover, of course, since Devon, and probably Ellie too, was wondering just how long they were going to be joined at the hip but in no other, more physically and romantically significant...joining.

She had then pushed the limits as far as she knew how. She had spent hours choosing what to wear, settling at last on a tracery of lilac lace that she knew showed her - a lot of her - to great advantage. She was going to bare herself to Chuck, at least as far as she could, given that Casey would be listening, and given that she had to keep Chuck thinking in terms of the cover. But that was going to be hard to do if she uncovered so much. But she wanted to do it - she wanted to share herself with Chuck, she desperately wanted intimacy with him. Not just physical intimacy, although she wanted that ( _Oh, how I want that!_ ), but complete intimacy, a relationship in which nothing was held back, without the limits and boundaries that had crisscrossed her past life and that crisscrossed her present life - a checkerboard of scars and papercuts.

The lilac lingerie was Sarah's pressing against the limits, so to speak, trying to somehow get Chuck to understand without complete understanding, without her passing the limit. She could justify it in terms of the cover, the situation - to Chuck, to Ellie and Devon, to Graham, Beckman, and Casey (all three different dimensions of her current cover). She wanted to offer herself to Chuck. She could not follow-through on the offer. But she wanted him to recognize it, understand it - sort of.

Back weeks before, she had corrected Chuck when he stated that they were not a real couple: "We are a real couple, just not a normal couple." A paradox. Her life currently was lousy with paradox. Maybe it always had been and she had managed not to notice.

She knew Chuck heard the second part of what she said as a denial of the first. After all - and she could not blame Chuck for thinking this, logic was on his side - it was unclear how they could be a real couple but not a normal couple, if 'couple' meant the same thing in both parts. After all - and again she could not blame Chuck for thinking this, logic was on his side - if they were not a real couple (because they were not a normal couple), then they were an _unreal_ couple, and so not a couple at all. But Sarah wanted him to understand that they were a couple, a real couple, but they couldn't be a real couple, and she could not explain without compromising herself ( _in so many ways_ ) and…

 _Shit. Now I'm making my head hurt, along with my heart._

Predictably, the lingerie failed to make Sarah's impossible point.

Sarah arrived wearing the lingerie under a short trench coat. She knocked on the door, expecting Chuck, but Ellie answered. She took one look at Sarah. Sarah saw her fight back a good-natured smirk.

"Hey, Sarah. Nice _coat_."

Sarah was still getting to know Ellie, but she liked and admired her already. Not just for her monumental role in Chuck's life, but for the remarkable success of Ellie's own life. Ellie's life was a going concern. _So unlike mine._ She was brilliant, omnicompetent, beautiful and genuine. She was also intimidating. Not because she tried to intimidate, but because she took her life, and the lives of the people she cared for, so seriously. A Bartowski trait, really. She was by no means humorless - she had some of Chuck's gift for comedy when she chose to use it - but she was _intense_.

Ellie could not hide her pleasure at seeing Sarah, and seeing Sarah so obviously dressed ( _undressed_ ) for Chuck. But she did not make any other remark than the coat remark.

"Thanks, Ellie. I hope Chuck likes it."

Ellie huffed with amusement. "I doubt he'll let you wear it for long." Then Ellie blushed at her own remark, and Sarah joined her. Both reddened, they laughed at each other. _I wish this was real, that this was about to happen. That you were the sister of my real boyfriend._ "Okay, well, I guess I should go and see if all this has the planned effect." _Ellie does not understand the planned effect. Do I?_

Chuck was dancing amid candles in his room, music playing. The scene struck Sarah hard. What she had been unable or unwilling to imagine, Chuck had imagined. The scene was perfect. And _wrong_. False. And the incoherence of what Sarah was doing came home to her in the incongruity of the scene.

But she turned her disappointment and frustration on Chuck, asking him what he thought was going to happen. She kept her tone even. Still, he got angry, angry at the implication, if not the tone. He told her he was very familiar with the concept of 'faking it'.

And he was. She forced him to be. Over and over. The situation forced him to be. But his comment hurt; it felt like a rejection, a rejection of whatever this was, whatever it was she had planned, a rejection of her chance to make her impossible point. She took off her coat, no longer as an offer, a gift, even if one of which Chuck could have only taken a window-shopper's possession. No, now she took it off as a punishment, allowing him to see what he was missing. _The 'faking it' concept, the damn Lou girl. His hesitancy to call Sarah his girlfriend in front of Lou. The hopelessness of her hopes._ And, so, for good measure - recalling just then how he had looked at her when Alahi had groped her - she added that wearing the lilac lingerie was her being 'professional'. _Oh, hell, why did I do that?_

Chuck responded by implying that she was a prostitute.

They were both hurt and furious.

The lilac lingerie was wasted. Worse than wasted. It became a symbol of contention between them, of tension between them. Of the limits between them. Nothing between them but lilac lace, yards, and yards, and yards of it.

 _Limits._

Chuck retreated to thoughts of Lou. He asked Sarah about dating other people, given that they were cover dating. Sarah wanted to date Chuck - _cover date Chuck_ \- exclusively. She was not going to share him. Not with anyone. Particularly not with that minuscule, mayonnaise-smelling brunette. But it was not up to her. Like most things in her life, it was not up to her.

* * *

Her goldfish was still swimming in his bowl. Around and around.

* * *

"No," she had answered.

Chuck had no right to ask, knowing she was drugged. Of course, he was too. He was telling the truth when he asked. _Did that make sense?_ He had no right.

But then again, she had no right to keep him Limbo, doing all she could to keep him in love with her while making the love seem one-sided. She was forcing him to live like a hunger artist, slowly starving the affection she mercilessly kept alive: _Sarah and Chuck: A Romance_ _. By Franz Kafka. (Damn high school lit class_.)

Chuck had dumped her. Casey kept insisting on it. And that was how she felt. Dumped and in the dumps. Down deep in them. Miserable and heartbroken. The cherry on top? She was going to get to watch Chuck date Lou through the windows of the Wienerlicious, her own front row seat. Or, even better ( _worse_ ), Lou could end up involved in a mission. And, of course, those things happened.

Lou's ex turned out to be the son of an unsavory sort of guy, and unsavory himself. No wonder the sandwich maker canned him. Sarah had to admit that the woman had good instincts. She had dumped the loser and had chosen Chuck. Sarah had tried to make it clear to Lou that Chuck was a good choice. Despite how unhappy she was, Sarah wanted Chuck to be happy.

But she couldn't want it enough to keep from sabotaging the mission-date. She chose an embarrassing pin for the bug. She went into the club with little provocation. Chuck was pissed. She was pissed. It was a mess.

Still, she could not shake the feeling that, although she knew Chuck liked Lou, that Chuck was not serious about Lou. He was Chuck, after all. Carina had been right. He did love Sarah. He would not, could not, just shut that off and take up with Lou. The situation had caused this; she, Sarah, had caused this. He chose Lou because he was fatigued. As Sarah was too. Staying alive in this Limbo was exhausting. Lou was not just normal. She was easy. (Sarah laughed out loud, then grew serious, sad.) Chuck wanted a way out, some relief from the constant unavailable availability of Sarah.

She knew that Chuck's side of this was worse than hers. Despite the difficulties of his childhood, Chuck had been raised with a hunger for reality, with a robust sense of it. And he thought of reality as, so to speak, all or nothing. Sort of like Hamlet ( _high school lit class, again_ ), Chuck thought in differences of kind: "To be or not to be?", "Real or unreal?" But Sarah's life, sustained on falsehoods and enshadowed as it had been, had taught her to think in differences of degree: "More real or less real?" She thought she could make sense of 'real but not normal'. She thought she could make sense of 'something-nothing'. Chuck heard incompatibles. She heard an in-between place on a continuum.

The truth was that she...liked...cover dating Chuck. She had been happy. Happy enough. Was that all she wanted? No, not exactly. But it had been good. It had been enough. Myth-eaten though it was, it had been more than she had ever had before, more than the not-nothing-not-something she had with Bryce. It had been more than she thought was her due - _way more_. But it had been making Chuck unhappy, frustrated, desperate. She had become more and more dissatisfied with making him unhappy. She hated herself for doing it. She hated herself for wanting him to love her.

But then she answered Chuck's question, "No." And the corpse dream had returned. Each night since the truth-serum, each night since the breakup, it was back. She now knew that despite Chuck being the one who said the words, her "No" had been the breakup. She killed the something-nothing. Chuck had only formalized it the next morning, pronounced the words by the graveside. _Headstone. Damn you, Carina._

She could only keep cover dating him if she answered "No", but he would not keep cover dating her after she said "No".

She knew that when she said "No." Even if she had hoped it would not be so.

* * *

She watched her goldfish swim. It stopped swimming for a second. Suspended. _Can a goldfish stop swimming and live?_

The goldfish started swimming again. Around and around, to and fro.

 _Swimming in limits._

* * *

 **A/N2** Um...so, yeah. The mazeways of Sarah's deflected, compartmentalized mind. Cognitive dissonances. She will begin to sort some of this soon.

I mentioned back at the beginning that I was going to include some experimental chapters. This was one.

Tune in next time for Chapter 24, "Lou/Incident/Bryce (Part Two): The Worst in Me."

A couple of quick thoughts.

Shifting to Sarah's POV decreases Casey's role in events. He will figure more in some later chapters, but given their division of labor in monitoring Chuck, they are not often together, and since I am not focusing on missions, there's not a lot of time when they are interacting.

Also, I take it that Chuck's insecurities about the Intersect and Sarah's affections are (forgive me) all in his head. That's one reason why the Intersect has not come up much and comes up here as it does. The Intersect brings Sarah to Chuck, but that is not what keeps her there. In and of itself, it is rarely in her thoughts.


	24. LouIncidentBryce (Two)

**A/N1** The companion piece to the last chapter. We shift now to Sarah in the first-person. Bombs away!

Don't own _Chuck._

This chapter is for Willie Garvin. For waiting. Like Job.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER 24

 _Lou/Incident/Bryce (Part Two)_ :

 _The Worst in Me_

* * *

When I've shown you that I just don't care  
When I'm throwing punches in the air  
When I'm broken down and I can't stand  
Would you be man enough to be my man?

\- Sheryl Crow, _Strong Enough_

* * *

I admit it.

Being with Chuck and having my hands tied? It has crossed my mind. Once or maybe twice. But not like this. Not when his are tied too and we are arguing in the trunk of a moving car.

I guess it's true: _Be careful what you wish for. Like the genie and the lamp._

Chuck calls me jealous. But he's been jealous since Carina came to town. I know he's trying not to think about me and Bryce...together. Breaking into bedrooms. _We never did that, although we were...together._

It's like how I keep trying not to think about Lou. And her naming a sandwich after Chuck. And his date with her. And his going into the sandwich shop with her. _Mayo_. Casey says nothing happened. I know what he means. But it...pisses me off. I mean, I am not jealous. No, really, I am not jealous _. I'm so jealous that for days I have been little more than a green afterimage. An infinitely thin slice of the color of jealousy and nothing more._

The thought of losing him makes me feel like...nothing. Nothing. Nothing but a spy. But I found out here, in Burbank - haven't I? - that maybe I could be more. More. I feel stirrings...of other things. I know the words: 'husband', 'family'...'children'. I know the man. He's tied up with me. I just don't know the woman. Me. I've kept me from me. I have tried not to know what I am doing. For so long.

* * *

It started with Dad.

We were in a small town in Ohio. Dad was running a con. I was just old enough to have started to understand. That was making Dad nervous. I had a small part in the con - a cameo. But the woman Dad was conning was not rich. She had kids. The holidays were approaching. Dad was conning her into a short-term, grab-it-or-it's-gone imaginary investment opportunity. Like a lightning-fast Christmas club. He did. The woman took us to the bank and she gave Dad her savings, almost all of it. Dad thanked her. Gave her some worthless papers, and we drove away.

We crossed over from Marietta into West Virginia - Parkersburg, I think. I couldn't stop looking at Dad.

"What?"

"We stole it from her. We took her Christmas." I hated to accuse him. He was my Dad. But I finally got it. I understood what we were doing.

"It's what... _we_ do." And my whole past changed its color. I turned and looked out the window.

I guess Dad heard me sniffle. "Darlin', you have to understand. We do what we do. Focus on the plan and the job. Not the people, except as necessary for the job. They don't exist except during the job. They were not really there before. They are not really there afterward. Focus on the job. Focus on doing it as well as you can. They call us 'con artists'. I take that seriously. Artists. We are artists. What's the high-brow line? Oh, yeah, _art for art's sake._ That's it, darlin'. Artists. When the job is over, put it away, forget it. You can only revisit it if you think you can learn from it for a new job. Otherwise, put it away. Forget it. Bury it."

He paused for a minute. He obviously wanted that to sink in, for me to take it on board. I wiped my eyes and turned back to him. He gave me a weak smile.

"Bury it. And don't think about what happens to anyone after it. That's not your problem. Your focus should be on the next job. Job to job to job. That's how a con artist lives. And you are always on the job. There's nothing to think about," he paused and softened the lecturing tone his voice had taken on, "nothing to worry about or feel guilty about. Well, other than bungling the job."

He looked at me and I nodded. Not because I agreed. But I knew that was my life. And I guess over time I came to agree, even if there was no specific moment when I said 'Yes' to it.

* * *

I have only known what I was doing as it mattered to missions. The missions gave me parameters, goals and a focus. I knew what success was, what failure was. I lived in that structure. Until the baby made me go off-mission. _I wish I could see Molly. Even a picture…_

And until Chuck shattered my mission-focus altogether. I keep trying but I can't get it back, not completely. I'm not sure if I want it back, not completely. But I don't know my way around outside the mission-structure. I feel lost, exposed, out-of-control. Wandering. Wondering.

One of the reasons I am...comfortable...with cover dating is that it keeps the dates _inside_ the mission. It keeps us inside the mission. " _No hands or feet outside the car."_ Part of the mission. Under control. Parameters, goals, focus. I can avoid the mess of emotions...mostly. Avoid the...reality. But I am doing to him what Bryce did to me. _I'm such a bitch. Such a hypocrite._ And a mission date, a cover date, cannot give me what I really want. It can only give me a thin substitute. I like that substitute. It's more real than anything I have ever known. But...

But I am trapped, like my goldfish. Only worse. I understand the trap but still cannot get out of it. Like a fly in a fly-bottle - but with a damned cork. Even if I could get myself turned around, facing the right way, still: no exit.

Trapped. You are trapped. At the moment, in a trunk with Chuck.

 _Focus_. None of this matters if something happens to Chuck. _Nothing matters if something happens to Chuck._ And Casey can't find us; Chuck got rid of his watch. _Be professional. Keep the Intersect safe. Art for art's sake._ Mission.

ooOoo

Running. We escaped. But as usual with Chuck, we run into more danger, not out of danger. Always deeper with him, always. I can't slow the fall. The bomb.

The bomb. A bomb in a box.

We run to it, crowbars in hand. Open it. Bomb. Chuck can defuse it. Bombs are his thing. _I wonder if that's why he finds me worthwhile? Tick, tock. Complicated mechanism. Explosion always imminent._ A timer. Not me, the bomb. 60 seconds, 59, 58…

I knew my time with Chuck was running out. I go to the bomb. Chuck says a prayer to the Intersect, asking for computer intervention. I open the timer, but I have no idea how to do this.

I ask Chuck if he flashed. No. He's holding his head as if he could squeeze the answer out. The Intersect would fail us now. I tell him to run. I will stay behind to try to defuse it.

"No," he answers.

This time it is Chuck who answers "No". But he isn't lying. He means it.

"I'm not going to leave you here."

I _order_ him away. I am the handler, after all. He is the asset. _Go, Chuck. Even without the Intersect, your life matters much more than mine. If I die...well, you will be sad, but you'll eventually know you are better off. Run, Chuck._

He answers, "No." _Damn you, Chuck. I want you to live. My hopes for me are tied to you. If you live and I die, my hopes - for your happiness - can live on. I won't be the one to make you happy, but I was never going to be that one. Never. Why couldn't I ever just face that, say it to myself? I know I've been making you unhappy, but I have been blaming that on the situation, the rules, my past. But the truth is that I am not the one to make you happy. I have a gift for making you miserable. That's my gift._

 _That, and death._ I pull my gun - _an incarnadine light seems to color everything around me._ I am pointing my gun at Chuck. Like the first night. I aimed then at his heart. But I know now. I missed. I will keep missing. I can't have it. I can't hold it. _But I can hold a gun. That fits my hand perfectly._ I order him away. Leave, please leave.

He scoffs at me. "You're going to shoot me to prevent me from being blown up? That's a great plan." _Like my lilac lingerie. Every plan involving you, Chuck, goes pear-shaped. Or starts pear-shaped. Heart-shaped? I don't know anymore…._

Why is he so stubborn? Why does he keep trying, always keep trying, when I push him away, hurt him...sometimes on purpose. Why is he still standing here? He says something about courage but I only sort of hear it. But then he says that I always bring out the worst in him. _If I had more time, I would hurt because of that, if I weren't so angry. Doesn't he know that is my worst fear, the darkest one, the one swimming in the very bottom of my heart? That I will corrupt him, ruin him, darken him?_ \- But I can't, won't think about that.

Why won't he listen to me? He makes me crazy. I can't be me when I am with him and I can't be someone else. All my lists, my rules, my professional focus, my professional ideal, the translucent barriers between me and my past - he makes it all shaky. Brittle. Transparent. All the things I have counted on. Instead, he makes me...different.

I bring out the worst in _him_? "And you in me." _Did I just say that? I am going to die with a lie on my lips, resentment on them, instead of...whatever it is I feel, this strong, buffeting something._

 _I am going to die with a lie on my lips?_

He tells me it was nice knowing me. It sounds like one of my own understatements.

It was so nice knowing you, Chuck. _Am I going to die with a lie on my lips?_

 _No._ Chuck closes his eyes in preparation for the blast. I step to him and pull him against me. And I kiss him. I kiss him. _I_ kiss him.

Because I want to wipe the lie from my lips. Because I want to taste the truth. For me, Chuck is the truth. This is no cover kiss. No one is around.

I am not Special Agent Sarah Walker. This is not a Hello or Goodbye peck, cover kiss, even if it is Hello and Goodbye all at once. This is a girl kissing a boy, because that boy, that kiss, is the fondest wish of her heart. He tastes indescribably _sweet,_ indescribably _good._ At first, I cup his face, press my lips to his. He puts his hands on my back. And then the desire for him that has been coals inside me, banked and glowing, inflammable - the desire erupts and I become flame. Fire. All around me, fire. All of me, fire. I open my mouth, taste him more deeply. I invite him to taste me. He does. Sweet. Good. True. Hot.

So much, so much, so much.

I have been waiting for this kiss for a lifetime. I had no idea I was waiting for it. I kissed him out of need and he _gave_ in response to my need, gave me what I needed. _Him_. I feel it here in his arms. Home. Completeness. Desire, white-hot and yet, and yet - a still point in my turning world. I am neither enfleshed nor fleshless. Neither soul nor body. Just Sarah. Whole. Integral. One piece. My heart is dancing determinedly, to music only it hears. Yes, this. Yes, yes, _this._

Still and moving.

I have no measure of how long the kiss lasts. No measure _for_ how long the kiss lasts. But during it - no, there is no during; it is everything - I feel blood rushing through me, warm and red.

This is up to me. I did this. Sarah. Sarah kisses Chuck. Sarah plus Chuck.

The explosion inside me keeps me from noticing the lack of explosion outside me. Until, finally, I do. The kiss breaks. Chuck and I stand, panting. The timer is at zero.

We did not die. We are alive. Alive past the kiss. That future I have been struggling with, the one for which I have only the Bellman's Map to guide me? That future. That's where I am. I have passed over, passed through. Blown past the limits, the lines, the boundaries. I cannot blame Chuck…

"The good news is - we're alive," I say, his taste still on my tongue. Chuck is panting, thinking, working it all out. The weeks, months of cover dating. My lie under truth serum. The something under the nothing. That this has been real for me, as real as it could be. I see him working it out.

"The bad news is this is a kind of uncomfortable moment, right now." I did this. I destroyed the cover. I uncovered my heart. He knows.

He tells me the moment is completely comfortable. And of course, that is how it would be: I cannot do real; Chuck can.

He knows. He always brings out the worst in me. The best in me. _All of me_. No compartments. Nothing is safe from him, ever. I was right on our first date. I can't pretend to date this man.

I turn from him. I don't know what to do. When have I ever been so exposed? Chuck is my asset. I have never kissed an asset, never a real kiss. I have never kissed anyone like I just kissed Chuck. I kissed Chuck. Not part of the mission. Not a mission. It was real. He knows.

What does that mean? What happens now?

I never get a chance to answer. Casey shows up. Chuck has to go to a Buy More shift. We do not get a chance to talk about what happened.

I admit it.

I avoid him.

ooOoo

And then the bomb turns out to be Bryce. Alive. Because _that_ makes my day better...

* * *

 **A/N2** I have finished grading and so found a little extra time to write. The final part of this sequence comes in Chapter 25, "Lou/Incident/Bryce (Part Three): Escape Clause". It will be a longer chapter. I have been building to this short chapter for a while and it is crucial for what is to come.

A nod to T. S. Eliot's _Burnt Norton._

Thoughts? A PM or review?


	25. LouIncidentBryce (Three)

**A/N1** Before you read this, you may want to check and make sure you read Chapter 24. I posted it inside the twenty-four-hour window (after posting Chapter 23), so it did not move the story back up the boards. If you haven't read it, please do, and please review it. And this chapter too. Curious what people are making of all this.

We are heading into a section of the show that seems to make Sarah especially easy to dislike. I hew close to details in several scenes so as to try to make sense of them and of her. She has no good options, really. But you will see what I mean…

Chapter structure is a bit complicated. Again, I assume familiarity with the relevant episodes, especially Nemesis.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

 _Lou/Incident/Bryce (Part Three)_ :

 _Escape Clause_

* * *

 _In so far as man rests satisfied with the things that he experiences and uses, he lives in the past and his moment has no present content. He has nothing but objects. But objects subsist in time that has been...The present is not fugitive and transient, but continually present and enduring...True beings are lived in the present, the life of objects is in the past._

\- Martin Buber, _I and Thou_

* * *

 **Part One - Omaha?**

* * *

Sarah shut the door behind him. Bryce was gone. To 'Omaha'. Alone. She had made her choice. She was staying in Burbank. But Burbank was a mess. She had messed it all up. She had kissed Chuck and then everything...well, then...everything. _The anti-Midas touch._ It turned out to work with her lips, too. Gold to lead.

Her lips. They had caused her problems.

* * *

In the initial shock of discovering Bryce's body, or rather, discovering Bryce, Sarah had simply been numb. The numbness had settled on her before the discovery. It had settled on her after the kiss, during the awkward moments with Chuck during which they - during which she - avoided eye contact, had met his attempts to talk to her with silence.

Why had she done that? Reacted to the single greatest moment of her life like that?

Because she had no clue, none, what to do. She was in the future. Her not-so-brave new world. Clueless. And then Bryce. And suddenly all the questions, and the unfinished business between them, surged up, swamped the kiss, Chuck, Burbank. Pulled her under. But through it all, she was numb. It was as if her emotions had ceased to exist. Two massive upheavals in the space of a couple of hours. It was like having glanced into the sun, twice, and then being unable to see. She had felt so much with Chuck, a seismic emotional event. The basic structure of her life shifted at that moment - the lines were redrawn, the limits changed - but she did not understand the shift: it bewildered her. It robbed her of speech, almost of thought. And then she saw Bryce. And the changed landscape of her life suddenly had the past superimposed upon it.

When she saw him, before they took him to the hospital, she felt nothing but shock. But slowly, as she rode with Casey in the Crown Vic to the hospital, she began to react.

Her first reaction was to Chuck and the kiss. He had called her. Left a message. She understood. _He knew._ She had revealed herself. He had _seen_ her. Now, he wanted to see her. He wanted to know what the kiss meant. She had no answer. Listening to his message, she could tell that her intuition had been right. She had at times wrestled with the idea of telling him how she felt, really telling him instead of giving him the calculated vaguenesses, ambiguities and elasticities she normally gave him, all the things designed to keep him feeling what he felt for her, but to keep him from knowing she felt it too. It was fine if he suspected; she wanted, needed him to suspect. But that was why her truth-serum-"No" was such a disaster. It killed the suspicion. It broke them up. The kiss had been a contradicting, underlined "Yes". What the truth serum could not do, the bomb ( _the apparent bomb_ ) did. Her lips confessed. Her heart had been in them, on them, behind them. Pressed against Chuck's.

Yes, it was fine if he suspected, only suspected. But if he knew, and she let them act on that knowledge, let them be real in any way, he would never be able to hide it. The phone messages proved it. More than that, Sarah had no idea how to be in a real relationship. The closest she had come was with the man in the ambulance, Bryce, and that relationship had never been real, not as it could have been. _Could it have been? There were no handler/asset obstacles for it to face. But is spy/spy less of an obstacle to reality?_

She was a creature of cons, covers, rules, lists. But none of that would help her. And Chuck would give them away. She could not let him have the kiss. She would have to find some way to take it back, change its meaning, throw it under suspicion. Return to _status quo_ : _Limbo_. Or she would lose what she had with Chuck. It would be taken from her or she would ruin it.

ooOoo

Inside the hospital, Bryce refused to talk. He demanded to see Chuck. Neither Casey nor Sarah revealed themselves to Bryce. For very different reasons. Sarah could have talked to him. Casey pressed her to do so. Casey knew about her past with Bryce, of course.

"Rogue agent or not, Walker. You used to sleep with the guy. He'll at least listen to you. I don't like the idea of giving him access to the Intersect." When Sarah narrowed her eyes, Casey grunted, "To Bartowski."

"No, Casey, I don't think I will be any help. He went rogue while we were...together...and he told me nothing. I don't know why he would talk to me now."

"Then I guess it will have to be Bartowski. We need to know what's going on. We need to know what's on Bryce's mind."

 _What is on Bryce's mind? What was on his mind - back then, when he left? Do I really want to know any more?_

Casey dropped Sarah at her place and she went in an got a quick shower, changed. She was ready to see Chuck, to take him to Bryce.

But when she parked the Porsche outside the Buy More, her hands began to tremble. It was all catching up with her now. She was going to have to face Chuck. He would want to talk. What if he grabbed her and kissed her? Would she stop him, could she, or would it all happen again, and would she find herself unwilling, unable, to stop it? She had to keep him at arm's length until the lingering effects of that kiss dissipated. They had not dissipated yet. She had been forced to turn the shower to cold, to very cold.

Cold. She needed to be cold. She needed to make Chuck unsure of what he knew. She retreated to her agent tone when they met in the aisle inside the store. Ice Queen. And before he could say it, she did: "We need to talk." But she said it in a tone meant to warn him, not warm him. He started trying to talk to her anyway. He mentioned the kiss and Sarah felt herself warming. She fought it back the best way she could. The coldest water she could throw on Chuck: _Bryce._ "Chuck, Bryce is alive."

ooOoo

Chuck was looking at Bryce through a one-way glass.

Sarah was on the side with Chuck. Casey was there too. They sent Chuck in to talk to Bryce. But Bryce got free, grabbed Chuck. Without thinking, automatically,Sarah rushed in to save Chuck. She pulled her gun and aimed it at Bryce. She had to save Chuck. "Bryce, No!" She did not want to shoot Bryce. But she was not going to let him hurt...her asset. She realized that she was going to have to be careful around Bryce too, and not let him see what was really ( _Ha!_ ) going on. Or let Chuck see it ( _again_ ).

Bryce escaped. And Sarah was able to exhale. She had questions she would like to have asked him, but she had new problems, more pressing ones. She took Chuck back to his place after Bryce escaped and after the initial search for him turned up nothing. Chuck, of course, still wanted to talk, but now not just about the kiss, but the kiss in light of Bryce's return to life.

Sarah loathed herself for it, but she saw an opening. Her old intuition. She could use Bryce's visit to walk back the kiss. She could put Bryce, in a sense, back in between them, where he had been from Carina's visit until the kiss. Sarah knew it was cruel, truly cruel, to make Chuck think he had lost to Bryce yet again. But she would not have to say that to him, she could keep Chuck suspicious of it, as she had kept him suspicious of her feelings for him. Chuck's tendency to make assumptions where she was concerned would help, as would his long insecurity where Bryce was concerned. So, she forced herself to say very little to Chuck, and what she did say was said as a special agent. When Chuck asked to know about the situation, Sarah's curt answer was: "You're protected." _A handler talking to her asset_. Sarah felt her stomach rise and her heart sink. She wanted to cry but she hardened herself, iced over. _I'm good at that._ Ellie appeared, asking about Thanksgiving. Sarah answered Ellie, saying that of course, she would be there. _For the cover._

ooOoo

Sarah was not the only guest at Thanksgiving. Casey was there, Morgan and his girlfriend too. But the unexpected guest was Bryce.

He showed up in Chuck's room and asked to talk to Sarah. Chuck let her know that Bryce was there. She went to Chuck's room. It was dark. She turned on the light, crept in slowly. Then she heard a sound behind her. Bryce. He had been above her, wedged into a corner of the ceiling.

She backed away from him, demanding to know why she should not just arrest him. But he kept stepping toward her, listing reasons. He was not a rogue spy. The Intersect was a mission.

And then, as he reached her: "Because, Sarah, you're still in love with me." And then he kissed her. _He_ kissed her. And the past that Bryce's return superimposed on Sarah's present, swept her up. The pain of Bryce's abandonment, the questions, the frustrated feelings. The worry that she was, ultimately, not someone anyone could care for. It swept Sarah away as Bryce swept her into a kiss. She responded. She had been in his arms before, in that kiss before. And he said that _she still loved him_ ….

 _Wait._ Sarah pulled herself free of the kiss. They had never once used that word before. Sarah had still never used that word. Not, at least, when she was telling the truth. Neither had Bryce, not at any time around her. For the cover, the Andersons, in public, yes, but neither of them had ever taken that showy commerce with the word to be real commerce. They said it but did not mean it; each knew they did not. Maybe Sarah had wanted to mean it, hoped they would one day mean it, that she would one day mean it, but that day never came. _Why would Bryce use that word now?_ The kiss, the one she was responding to, the love-talk, it was all for a mission, at any rate, for a purpose.

As she pulled herself free, she whispered harshly. "You've still got it."

He had always been good at seduction, the star of his class at the Farm. He knew how to push buttons, especially hers, since they had their past, since she had shown him where some of her buttons were. She responded to the kiss, to him - she was kissing the past, what she had once wanted - and her system was still so keyed up by the kiss, _the kiss_ , the one with Chuck. She was still taking cold showers. She lost herself for a moment - in the moment.

Bryce was good. He knew how to kiss. But she had felt that at the end, felt that he was kissing knowledgeably ( _a means to an end_ ), not out of need and desire. She had recently been kissed out or need and desire: she remembered all-too-vividly what that felt like. This kiss, while physically pleasant, was not the same. This was not real. Chuck's kiss was real. Too real.

 _Real. Unreal. My life stretched between._

"This isn't a play," Bryce pleaded, in response to her whispered comment. _Maybe. Maybe not. But it is not...real._ At best, Bryce had just kissed Mrs. Anderson. He was happy to see Mrs. Anderson. Maybe he even wanted Mrs. Anderson. He wanted Mrs. Anderson's help. But she was not Mrs. Anderson and she never had been. Not really. Only unreally.

Casey showed up and Bryce left through the window. Thanksgiving had ended.

ooOoo

She was in the courtyard with Chuck. Casey was still on the hunt for Bryce. He came hurrying back, and told them to call it in from his place. Sarah was getting angry. Everything was going wrong. She was ping-ponging around. Deliberately hurting Chuck. Kissing Bryce back. _Shit. Shit. Shit._

She could not understand how Casey had known Bryce was in Chuck's room, and she said so.

Chuck confessed, more or less. Sarah stopped her march toward Casey's door. She softened her voice a little. "You saw Bryce kiss me, didn't you?"

That had not been the plan. She had wanted to use Bryce's return to throw the kiss with Chuck under suspicion. Not to revoke it. She wanted to attenuate her "Yes" without reverse-alchemizing it into "No". Gold to lead. But, even though she had not initiated the kiss with Bryce, she had responded. It would have been bad enough if he had simply seen Bryce kiss her - the way she phrased it, hoping he might hear, and wonder - but he saw her kissing Bryce too. Why did it happen like this? And now Chuck was hurt. He had lost to Bryce again. After Chuck's kiss with Sarah, he was still the loser. Still a loser.

 _I am a miserable bitch. But what can I say that won't make this worse? Expose me, expose us, get me reassigned? Am I willing to go on hurting him and hurting myself in order to stay? To hurt him this much, in this way? To turn his insecurity against him? To tease myself with what I want but cannot have? It is all so exhausting. Casey told me Chuck ended things with Lou. I know he did it because I kissed him. And so I have taken her from him too. Lou. I guess I know how Chuck felt seeing me kiss Bryce. The way I felt seeing him with Lou. I can't keep making him feel so bad. But I don't want to give him up. I don't want us to be apart._

Pain in his eyes. "I guess this means we're not getting back together." _Oh, Chuck, goddamn it! Goddamn it all! If he had looked at me like that for another second…_

A light came on in Casey's apartment. Bryce. Sarah crept in more stealthily than she had to Chuck's room. Bryce did not hear her. Chuck followed. Sarah drew her S&W. Bryce heard Chuck make a noise and wheeled, gun up. Sarah trained her gun on Bryce again and she maneuvered Chuck behind her so that he was protected.

Then Bryce finally explained. Sarah got her answers. Bryce was recruited by an outfit called 'Fulcrum'. A special access group inside the CIA; he thought they were CIA. They had given him a mission. The Intersect. Sent him in deep; they knew everything - his activation codes he records and so on. He was ordered to shed his agency contacts ( _me_ ). He finally realized they were not CIA, but that they wanted to download and destroy the Intersect, get its intel.

"How can I trust you, Bryce?" Sarah needed to know.

Bryce lowered his gun. Changed his tone. "I didn't mean to hurt you, Sarah. I didn't know who to trust."

And there it was; it hit her.

She mistrusted him; he had mistrusted her. He claimed a few minutes before that she still loved him. But that made no sense. If he had believed that she loved him, really had believed that, he would have trusted her. But he had not. And if she loved him, if she _still_ loved him, she would trust him now. But she did not.

She had not loved him. So she did not still love him. He may have believed she cared about him, but he did not really believe she loved him. Maybe it had not been a play. But she was right. It was not real. That kiss with Bryce. _Not real_. Her response to it had been real enough, for a moment. But it had not meant what Chuck thought.

She was glad Bryce was alive - really glad, and that had played into the kiss too - and she was fond of him still. But it had not meant that she still loved Bryce or had ever loved him. She had not. She was not sure why she was so sure. Maybe it was the passage of time or maybe...Anyway, she was sure. Now.

But so was Chuck. Of the opposite. That she still loved Bryce. That she and Chuck were done.

Chuck flashed on 'Sandwall', a code word Bryce used. Bryce was telling the truth. The tension in the room went down until Casey entered and shot Bryce. Chuck fainted. Sarah stood, wondering what next. She crouched to check on Bryce and found he was wearing a vest. He was alive. He would live.

When Bryce recovered, he continued his story. It turned out that Fulcrum had thought, and still thought, that Bryce was the Intersect. _Fulcrum has Bryce confused with Chuck. I don't._

ooOoo

They were transferring Bryce to the CIA. The real CIA. Not Fulcrum. Chuck was on hand at the Buy More. He did not flash on the agents who came. Sarah was going to take Bryce in and finish his transfer to the agents. She looked back at Chuck. He still thought she had chosen Bryce. Still thought they were done. She knew she was hurting him. Again.

One the way, seated in the back of the car, Bryce asked if they were good. Sarah looked around the car, the counter-surveillance was in order. She told Bryce so.

But he meant them. _Them._ He was asking if they were back together; no, more, he expected that they were back together.

Good. Sarah was good _here._ In Burbank. With Chuck. She now knew what Bryce meant. But she also knew what she meant. She had thought Bryce was dead. She had moved on. She had found Chuck. And she was slowly - _so damn slowly_ \- finding herself. She had her assignment. She had her asset. She had her guy. But she was making her guy miserable. Making herself miserable. Hurting the man who she knew loved her and who she wanted to love her. _Can I keep hurting Chuck? How can I live with myself if I do? How can I live without him?_

Bryce thought that her problem was that she could not tell him that she wanted to be back together. He leaned in toward her. Before she could respond, the car was smacked by an on-rushing truck. Fulcrum!

The impact knocked Sarah unconscious. Bryce too. They came to at the same time, and fighting together, overcame the Fulcrum agents. Bryce looked for their leader. He was not there.

"Chuck!" Sarah needed to get to Chuck. They got to the Buy More in time. She and Bryce found their old Anderson's synergy. They fought together and ended the threat to Chuck. But as soon as they had, Sarah asked about Chuck. He had been on her mind the whole time. On her heart. She was so frightened that something might have happened to him.

It had. Or still might. The Fulcrum boss had him. Through what turned out to be a clever use of Klingon (and a bulletproof vest), Bryce and Chuck engineered a response to the boss. When it was done, and Chuck safe, Sarah found herself confronted by the two men. Too much. It had all been too much. She walked away from them both.

Later, when she had gotten herself under better control, she was standing with Chuck at the Nerd Herd desk. Their spot. Bryce wrapped up a meeting with Beckman and emerged from it wearing a tuxedo. He looked as he had looked on some of their missions. He looked like Mr. Anderson. Carina was right. Bryce was pretty from a distance. But he was a spy. He thought in terms of missions and covers. He could not trust, because trust was _never_ part of the mission. Spies do not fall in love. Spies do not trust. Chuck trusted. But Chuck was no spy. Thank God, Chuck was no spy.

It was hard to watch Bryce go. He was going to disappear. Go into deep cover. He had been an important part of her life. Her first... _what was the word? I don't know._

But then, saying goodbye, he told her they would always have _Omaha_.

Omaha. An old code word. He was telling her where he was going. Back to South America. Colombia. Where Fulcrum had presumably first recruited him. If he told her, then he must have gotten permission Beckman, and presumably from Graham too, to ask her. She could leave Burbank. Her assignment could change.

She had an escape clause. _Omaha._ She could leave. She could let Chuck out of Limbo. Let herself out of Limbo. She could choose Omaha instead of Limbo.

* * *

 **Part Two - Tracked or Trackless?**

* * *

Sarah was pacing in her room. She had her suitcase out. She was reviewing her options, trying to keep her head clear of her heart. She had not made a decision - other than to be ready, in case she decided to act on _Omaha._

She had her assignment. The Intersect. But to her, that meant Chuck. She could not just leave. Graham had put her here and, until whatever had transpired with Bryce, he had seemed willing to leave her there. She had not been able to leave. She had never been much focused on that, though. Not at all, really. Carina imagined she was - all the Snoresville, Boring, Yawns Yawning jabs at Burbank were because she thought Sarah was trapped there by her assignment. But Sarah wanted to be where she had been assigned to be. She wanted to be there. But maybe she should not be. Maybe she should take the _out_ , the escape clause, she had been given. Chuck already thought she had chosen Bryce over him. It would be cruel to leave him with that belief, but she had been planning to use his suspicion to walk back their kiss. How much crueler would this be really? Wouldn't it be being cruel to be kind? She could give Chuck to another handler. Maybe she could convince them that the boyfriend/girlfriend cover was a bad idea in Chuck's case. Maybe he could move on from her. Forget her.

The thought of Chuck forgetting her caused her a deep, physical ache.

 _Ache_. She had been aching the entire time she had been in Burbank. Maybe leaving would also be cruel-to-be-kind with regard to herself. She was fatigued, exhausted. She had made the situation between her and Chuck unlivable unless she caused them both more pain. Began to reassert their cover as cover dating. Who knew how much more pain she would cause them both?

She was not going to be the one to make him happy. Lou...well, not Lou but someone like her. She, whoever she was, would make Chuck happy. _Take my place. My place at his side._ Sarah was poison. More poisonous than the truth serum. If she stayed, she would not be able to let Chuck go. She would keep pulling him to her, and toward her world, because she did not know how to leave it. She did not want it but she did not know how to leave it.

The saddest part of this for her was that Chuck's belief that she had chosen Bryce would be false. If she left, she would not be choosing Bryce over him. When she stood in the Buy More, looking at them both, she was not choosing between them. That choice was made. Chuck. She was choosing between the lives, the worlds, they represented. The world Bryce represented was hard and cold, but it was also, given Sarah's life and training, easy. There were tracks all across that world, tracks she knew how to follow. She knew how to be Mrs. Anderson. She could go back to being Bryce's partner. _Just_ his partner, even if they used the Anderson cover. Maybe she would change her mind about that, down the road, after time away from Chuck ( _the thought of forgetting Chuck also made her ache_ ). But they could be the Andersons only as a cover, like when they were first in Moscow. At any rate, she would not be choosing Bryce or his bed. She would be choosing his world, her world, and finally accepting, fully accepting, that it would be the only world she would ever know. That Burbank was a fantasy, an unreality - for her. The part of her that had been hidden away, that part of her that had been in solitary confinement but broken free in Budapest, she would have to track that part of herself down and terminate it. That would be her overarching mission, whatever else the mission with Bryce might entail. Kill that part of her that had never accepted conning or spying, that part of her that now kept her hoping. That part of her that wanted Chuck to love her and could not bear the thought of him not loving her.

But that part of her could not have what it wanted, even if Sarah stayed. She had kissed away her limits, but if she stayed, she would have to re-institute them. With Chuck, she was now in the future she feared. With Bryce, she could go backward, back to the past.

The world Chuck represented was warm and kind, but it was also, given Sarah's life and training, incredibly difficult, overwhelming. Chuck's world was trackless. She had no idea how to find her way in it. She had no idea how to be in a relationship that was not inside a mission, a relationship that defined her life, not just her cover. She had no idea how long she could hold out against Chuck, before what she felt for him overcame her, or her fatigue did. If she stayed, she would have to insist on being the handler, on him being the asset. She would have to make him understand that they could not opt out of that structure. She would have to make him think that she did not care for him - not in that way, at least. But if she stayed, she would be _there_ , be with Chuck. And she was changing. She knew she was, despite the glacial pace of her changes. _Maybe one of the things that_ has _to change is my imagination itself._ Maybe the future would not seem so trackless one day. That part of her that was free was getting stronger. The kiss proved that. But she was going to fight that part of herself if she stayed, fight it for Chuck's sake and for her own. But she would not have to kill it, track it down and terminate it. She could try to work out some kind of truce, maybe even some kind of cooperation. But until she figured out how to do that, she would have to keep that part of her and Chuck separated.

She stared out the window, pondering the choice, when the landline rang. Bryce. She went to answer it, not sure what she would say, despite being ready to leave. But then her cell rang. Chuck. She picked it up and looked at the photograph of him. Her head was in her suitcase, her head told her to pick up the landline and go to _Omaha_. Her heart was with the picture on her phone, and it told her that she would never stop regretting it if she left. She stood there for a minute. She put the cell down. Like when she walked away from them both in the Buy More, she let them both go on ringing. She went back to staring out the window.

ooOoo

A few minutes after the phones stopped ringing there was a knock on the door. She heard Bryce's voice. She sighed and went to the door. When she opened it, he was standing there with his phone in his hand.

He held it up. "Thought maybe my phone wasn't working since you neither called nor answered." He walked in and she saw the expectation on his face grow satisfied. He saw her suitcase, gun, passport. He turned to her and leaned toward her, as he had in the car, his hands reaching out for her.

Sarah caught his hands in her own. "No, Bryce."

The surprise in his eyes was obvious. "I thought we were good."

"I never said that, Bryce. You seem to be remembering a number of things I never actually said." She narrowed her eyes at him and dropped his hands, stepping around him and walking away from him, toward the window.

She had not made her decision, but she was getting closer to it. She looked out as she had been at the lights of LA.

"Well, maybe I was interpreting your silence. As you said, you don't talk much."

"I did say that. And you never stop spying."

Bryce was not sure what she meant by that. He was silent. When she looked at him, she saw his jaw working but he was not sure what to say. After a moment, he gave her his trademark smile. "I am a spy. How can I stop being one? If I stopped, I would cease to exist. It is an _essential property._ Without it, I wouldn't be me. You're just the same, Sarah. You understand." Sarah glanced at her goldfish when he paused. _If I leave, would Chuck take my goldfish, keep it alive for me?_ "C'mon, Sarah. Let's get going. Time to be the Anderson's. I've been...looking forward to it since I had to leave."

"'Had to', Bryce? You couldn't have stayed long enough to say goodbye?" She turned fully to face him now.

"I told you, Sarah. I didn't mean to hurt you, but I didn't know who to trust. Fulcrum had gotten to me. Maybe they had gotten to you. Maybe they were going to use us against each other. I didn't know who to trust. Everyone looked suspicious."

"Even me?"

He gave her a downcast look. "Even you. But put yourself in my shoes? Would you have trusted me?"

She sighed, a long, deep sigh. "Bryce, that's not my point, or not exactly. I will concede that we didn't trust each other. So, in what sense were we together?" _After all this time, I finally ask the question._

Bryce looked lost. "We were together. Don't you remember the bedroom in Moscow? I do. It's been on my mind." She saw his eyes stray to her bed, then return to her.

"I remember. But that is history, Bryce." _It is. It is history. I don't know what my future holds. Pain, I am sure. For me, for Chuck. But I think the hope of an us is worth it. I hope that somehow an us becomes possible. I hope he will forgive me one day. Forgive me for what I am about to do._

"Like I said, Bryce. I have my assignment. I am staying."

Bryce looked at her suitcase and things, incredulous. "But you are ready to go."

"No, Bryce, not really. I have a good team here. And unfinished business." Better to hope in pain than to be hopelessly numb.

Bryce stared at her for a minute. He looked at his watch. "Ok. But you know where to find me. I will be there for 24 hours or so before I go under. You can change your mind."

Sarah walked to him and kissed his cheek. "Good luck, Bryce. Glad you are alive. Stay that way." She opened the door and he walked out.

* * *

Sarah put her things away then got ready for bed. Even though she had made her choice, she feared it, hated what it was likely to put Chuck through. Put her through. She twisted and turned, unable to sleep. Calling Bryce after all crossed her mind, but never as a serious possibility. When she finally got to sleep, it was nearly morning.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for Chapter 26, "My Guy".

A comment.

At the dead-center of the show is the distinction between appearance and reality, and a series of question about the shifty nature of that distinction. The show distributes Chuck and Sarah across the distinction: she on the _appearance_ side (unreality), he on the _reality_ side. But as the show unfolds, it turns out that Chuck's reality (his life) contains far more unreality than he ever knew. It turns out that Sarah is capable of far more reality than she ever imagined.

But the show itself is deliberately deceptive, and it is important to note that. The Nemesis episode is a great example. It lures the reader into thinking that Sarah is seriously tempted to re-join Bryce as a romantic partner. But I think that close attention to the details reveals that to be a mere appearance. She _is_ seriously tempted to re-join the world Bryce represents, but she is not tempted to choose him as a romantic partner over Chuck. _Band of Horses_ is right: Bryce is the ever-living ghost of what once was, the Ghost of Espionage Past. And Sarah is looking toward the future, although she cannot quite make it out. More about that as we move forward.

The show purposely puts the viewer in the position of a spy who has to sort appearance from reality. But if you look closely at the choices Sarah makes - where she positions herself, how she reacts, especially her response to the kiss with Bryce as she disengages from it - it becomes pretty clear what is happening. Sarah is uncomfortable after the kiss with Chuck, but she never for a moment doubts its reality. (It is its robust reality that makes her uncomfortable.) She is uncomfortable after the kiss with Bryce before she disengages from it - because she doubts the reality of Bryce's kiss. Chuck has been and remains her romantic choice. She chooses Chuck's world.

Sarah will begin to pay the price for her choice, as will Chuck, in the events that follow.


	26. My Guy

**A/N1** This ends the S1 stories.

Book One, the pre-Burbank stories I constructed (out of canon parts and my fevered imagination), forced me into close quarters with Wookiee and Nemesis. Sarah's pre-Burbank life has now come into collision with her Burbank one. This chapter, which finishes with a brief non-canon scene between Chuck and Sarah, is set immediately after Crown Vic. The final scene is prefaced by reflections and recollections on Sarah's part, and the events of Crown Vic figure into her reflections and recollections.

Remember, I am working inside and around canon. Its events are meant to stay fixed (despite interpretation or re-interpretation). So although I do not do anything with Undercover Lover or Marlin, they are to be understood as occurring as they did. In fact, the ending of this chapter foreshadows a crucial moment of Marlin. There will also be a bit about Marlin in the first sequence of S2.

[Taps glass from inside the computer screen. Tap! Tap! Anyone out there? Review? PM?]

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

 _My Guy_

* * *

An eye on the clock  
I don't talk much  
When I'm running  
On the inside  
When every conclusion reached  
Is out to you  
I put on my best face and my kid gloves, too  
And held up the end  
Until it's out of my hands  
Out of my hands

And if you tuned in to see blood  
It's not a subject that I surpass in  
My mission's been scrubbed; my brains were washed  
Because I never was your assassin

\- Michael Penn, _Out of My Hands_

* * *

Sarah sipped her coffee from a chipped mug. This one was even more badly chipped than the usual mug at _Pressing and Grinding._ But Sarah was sure that was because i-Jodi, as she had taken to calling the girl ( _in my head, short for 'Stink-i-Jodi'_ ), had served her.

Sarah and Chuck had come to the shop once in a while, to continue what Chuck called 'Sarah's education in popular music'. It was a private place for them, away from cameras, and made doubly private by the soundproofing in the Listening Rooms. Still, Sarah had checked for bugs when she put down her tray. Casey knew about the place, and although Sarah did not seriously suspect him of bugging it, it was not impossible. The room was clear.

Sarah looked at her watch. She was early. Chuck was coming in a Nerd Herder. He should arrive soon. The evening before, Sarah had gone to the Buy More Christmas party. Chuck gave her a new alarm clock. She had knifed hers when it went off too early the morning after Bryce left.

Jeremy had helped Sarah find an album while Jodi made her coffee. Her Christmas present to Chuck was modest. She hoped he would like it.

Chipped mug or not, the coffee was good. Sarah had kept a close watch on i-Jodi, just to be sure she did not spit in it. Although i-Jodi's jealousy sparked Sarah's own in return, an iota ( _Ha!_ ), Sarah mostly felt sorry for her. i-Jodi was so into Chuck, but he was so oblivious - partly by nature, partly because he was so lost in Sarah. _Lost in me. The lost leading the lost, and one is a bitch._ Although Sarah felt sorry for i-Jodi, she was glad that i-Jodi had not obviously thrown her hat into the ring. Sarah did not need another Lou incident, not on the heels of Bryce's rising and the mess Sarah had made afterward of re-asserting the handler/asset dynamic between herself and Chuck.

That would have been hard to do no matter what, but her own rampaging feelings and her regrettable tendency to overreact ( _ice or fire_ ) complicated things. She had been all over the place since she kissed Chuck and bid goodbye to Bryce, glad she stayed but unsure how to work it out.

And, then, of course, the next mission was a seduction mission. Lon Kirk. Sarah shuddered at the thought of Kirk, the thought of his hands on her body. She could still feel his unctuous, entitled hands...And, double _of course_ , Chuck had a ringside seat to watch her seduce Kirk - and she had made his seat more painful, practically electrified it.

ooOoo

She hated seduction missions. God, she did. Not that she liked termination missions. God, no. But those were normally quick in-quick out, minimal-contact sorts of missions. She had been able to tell herself she was just following orders, stopping the bad guys, and she had done her best to put the faces of the targets out of her mind when she was done. It helped that she normally saw them only once or twice, that she knew them, in the sense that she did, only from photographs. Gaining psychological distance from them was helped by her never having to be cheek-to-cheek with them.

But seductions were so often like soft-core cons. Even though there were no plans ever to deliver on what she promised, even though there were, in fact, plans, a team, to make sure it would not be delivered, she still had to make the promises, make them believably. Doing that was itself a distasteful action, but it usually required her to touch and be touched, sometimes to kiss and be kissed. She had to act in certain ways, and allow the mark to act certain ways. Cheek-to-cheek. Like with Kirk. She wore that skimpy bikini to his boat, allowed his hands roam her body. Pretended that she was enjoying it. Chuck had seen the bikini, seen the roaming, seen the pretending. (But Sarah really was wearing the bikini, Kirk's hands really were roaming her body.) And Chuck seeing it made it all so much worse. So much worse. Especially since he was not sure she was pretending exactly, or how far she was willing to allow the pretense to go.

He had implied she was a prostitute when she called her lilac lingerie 'professional', and although that had been another mess of Sarah's making, and although she knew he had just been angry, she also knew that Alahi's hands on her had stayed in Chuck's mind, and that that word was rattling around in there too. She knew he wondered her, about these sorts of missions. She had told him nothing. ( _As always._ ) And it all collected and made her furious with Chuck.

After the party they attended on Kirk's boat, sitting in her car outside Chuck's apartment complex, she had thrown Bryce in Chuck's face. Again. "Bryce would understand this kind of work." She had said it in response to Chuck's comment about her flirting with Kirk being disrespectful to her boyfriend. Chuck had commented that morning that he was surprised she was not "halfway to Bryce". In her annoyance with Chuck, she thought Chuck was still thinking about Bryce. She told him Bryce was not her boyfriend ( _really, he is not, never was exactly, that's your word, Chuck, not mine_ ) - and that even if he was, he would understand the mission. Chuck's reaction to finding out she was going to be alone with Kirk on his yacht hurt her - more than an iota. Sarah could feel ' _prostitute'_ rustling between them. It only made her angrier when she realized Chuck was using 'boyfriend' to refer to himself, or rather to himself as her cover boyfriend, as Carmichael. _Shit._ Even her attempt to tell Chuck indirectly that she was not involved with Bryce went wrong, ricocheted into her heart.

Chuck's comment, clarified, added to the sting of the whole mission evening for Sarah. She knew that she had gone overboard with Kirk in public, at the party. She had told Chuck that morning that she was in Burbank because she had a job to do. That had been her first move in re-asserting their handler/asset relationship. She saw him deflate - it was particularly obvious because he had been excited about seeing her, excited that she stayed. Cautious, but excited. She would have liked to enjoy that. But in order to be Chuck's handler, in order to take the kiss back from him, she had to take it back from herself. So, she had made herself stop thinking of it as the kiss; she had started calling it 'The Incident' even to herself, in her private thoughts.

She was good at burying things, shrouding them, hiding from herself. She shrouded the best moment of her life from herself. She buried a moment she wanted only to live again and again. But it took effort, energy, caused psychological fatigue; it was a massive piece of self-denial, a huge feat of radically engineered self-deception. That made her even more volatile with Chuck, made her overreaction even more _over_. As a result, instead of flirting with Kirk covertly, as she could easily have done (it was obvious Kirk wanted her from the first time he saw her at the party), she flirted overtly, sloppily, very publicly. _(Did I actually wink at Kirk? Jesus, I_ did.) She slathered embarrassment atop Chuck's torment. But that too made her mad - at Chuck. At herself. At Chuck. But she was going to re-assert that he was her asset. Nothing more.

Sarah had not realized Chuck was watching her on Kirk's yacht while she was there the next day. She found out later, after Chuck's flash. A flash gone wrong, prompting a futile raid by Casey and the team. The futile raid was bad; it would cause problems with Beckman and Graham. Still, it was knowing that Chuck had seen her with Kirk that made her feel queasy. The queasiness added to her anger. As everything seemed to be doing. She blew up at Chuck, accused him of faking a flash at just the moment he thought ( _and he did, and God, that hurt her_ ) she was going to get intimate with Kirk.

It was not enough that she had her own misery to contend with, her own memory to deny and subvert, that she had to pretend to want Kirk, let him touch her. Chuck had to interfere, had to witness it, had to not just be jealous, but to suspect the worst, that she was going below the deck actually to be intimate with Kirk. Wrong. She had a team backing her up - and she was a gifted spy. The bikini would have stayed on, as her mission bikinis always had. It revealed enough to do the job. She would have controlled Kirk and the situation.

The larger situation, though, Sarah's life, her life with Chuck, was completely out-of-control. She had gone to talk to him about Kirk, filled with anger. That conversation with had gone haywire, unsurprisingly.

ooOoo

She had pushed past Chuck when he opened the door, no greeting. She demanded to know if Ellie and Devon were home. Chuck responded that they were at work.

"What the hell happened today?" _Why were you there, Chuck? I hoped you would not see that. Don't you understand the job? I wasn't going to do what you thought. 'Manipulation, not copulation': my Farm instructor. - I'm so glad you did not want me to go below that deck. I did not want to either, but my job makes me do things I hate, Chuck, like this, like what I am now doing to you, to me._

"I don't know. I don't get it. I had a flash."

 _Flash of jealousy. I have to be able to do my job here, Chuck, or they will take it from me. Take you from me. You can't interfere. It's not just professional pride - although that was wounded today (if I have to do these awful things, I at least want to do them well, succeed_ ) _. And Chuck, if we can't function as a team, succeed, there will be no team. No us._

She called his flash convenient. She really was not sure. The Intersect was wonky, unpredictable. And Chuck was a constant surprise. She had a hard time, even as frustrated and angry as she was, believing Chuck had lied.

Casey had told her what happened. He admitted, begrudgingly, that he had been tweaking Chuck, worsening the thought he knew was tormenting Chuck, that Sarah's mission was to sleep with Kirk. But Casey had relented, he had shown Chuck the backup team, tried to get Chuck to understand that Casey had been tweaking him. But that is when Chuck's flash occurred. Had it occurred earlier, it would have seemed more like jealousy; had it occurred later, it would have seemed more genuine. But happening then, just as Casey was clarifying what was really going on, and just as Sarah was heading below deck with Kirk, it was ambiguous, maybe a flash, maybe real.

She knew that. She should have treaded more lightly. She did not really believe Chuck had lied. But her emotions were spiraling, zigzagging, moving in patterns for which there were no known names, and it hurt that Chuck had reacted to Casey's tweaking, taken it seriously. Maybe he hadn't believed it, but he had been worried. Just as she now was about his flash.

"I think we need to discuss the fact that you let your emotions get in the way today." _Yes, I just said that. I'm supposed to be the dancer and I lead with the wrong foot, absolutely the wrong foot._

"My emotions?" Chuck asked. He seemed genuinely baffled by the idea that he had faked a flash. His tone softened.

Sarah could not help herself, could not keep the words off her lips. "Things have been a little off since The Incident, Chuck."

 _What?! What the hell just happened? What did I just say? Did I really just manage to combine insulting understatement with callous re-naming? Did I just call our kiss 'The Incident' out loud? 'A little off'?_ That's _my description of the chaos of Bryce's visit and my almost complete refusal to speak since then? Of my deliberately embarrassing Chuck, flirting shamelessly and, well, unprofessionally, with Kirk? Humiliating Chuck to make him my asset, to take back the kiss. A little_ fucking _off? And I know he thinks it is because I actually want Bryce, that I still have romantic feelings for Bryce, that I wish I had gone with him, that Bryce made me some fantastic offer of exotic days and erotic nights, instead of offering me...sightless passport stamps and the goddamn Andersons._

"And what incident are you referring to Agent Walker, huh?" _Oh, God. He made air-quotes around 'Incident'. I know that hurt him. Yes, Chuck, that kiss is now for me The Incident. I hate me. But damn it, Chuck, ease up on me, please give me a break. Can't you see how much I hate all this, how much this anger is costing me? Of course not, since I have hidden all that from you. Taken back everything I have given. As if I didn't understand the logic of gifts._

 _And 'Agent Walker'? Shit. I had that coming, after implying I am only here because of my job. I am the one who wanted to re-assert the handler/asset structure. I take back what I give, and when I get what I want, I find I don't want it. It's_ Sarah _, Chuck. Call me Sarah. No, no, it's Agent Walker. Handler. Oh, damn it._

Chuck continued to respond by refusing Sarah's phrase. _He keeps calling it 'Kiss'. Yes! No. And then he gets in another reference to Bryce being my boyfriend. I should not verbally duel with this man. Banter, yes. Duel, no. He's better with words than I am. He keeps saying 'The Kiss' and every time he does, I live it again. I can't relive it. I have to bury it. But he keeps calling it from the grave._

"Stop saying 'kiss'. It happened, okay? What's done is done. Can we just not talk about it, please?"

 _Because it is killing me, Chuck. I can't let myself think about it or it will happen again, right here, right now, in front of this Christmas tree. Another...Incident. Please, Chuck, let me do this. Let me be the handler._

And then Chuck did it. He put Sarah in a dilemma. He focused her on his lips. He wanted her to tell him whether she kissed him just as a reckless final act, as she might have kissed anyone who happened to be there (like some random New Year's Eve stranger at a party), or whether she kissed him because she wanted to kiss _him_ as her final act.

 _I wanted my last breath to mix with yours._ \- _No. Stop. Don't relive the kiss. He just gave you a way out, Sarah. Take the first option and take the kiss back once and for all. Turn it into the Incident for real. Make it nothing, no longer something. Be the handler! The second option is closed. You can't admit that. Take the first option. You refused to use Bryce's escape clause; this is almost as good. Be the handler! Re-assert yourself!_

 _I can't._

 _There is a part of me that would rather die than take that kiss back, really take it back. Confuse him about it, yes. Make him wonder, yes. But to categorically take it back? I can't. I should. I can't._

Sarah denied the dilemma. She called the kiss, The Incident, a mistake. She left the second option open. But she did not take it. She did not take the first either. She should have been Chuck's handler, taken the first option. But her heart was not in it. She did manage to slam the door as she stormed out.

ooOoo

After Beckman and Graham dressed Sarah and Casey down, Casey turned on Sarah, glaring. He had a sense that something had happened between her and Chuck. He asked if she had compromised herself.

 _Compromise. That is all I ever do. About everything. I compromise myself. I hate this. I hate what I am doing._ _No promise, only compromise._

And then she lost control of her lips again. Instead of answering, denying that she was compromised, she asked Casey a question. One that had been on her mind, she realized for weeks.

"Do you ever think about a normal life? Family? Children?"

Casey's glare intensified. He began a lecture about serving something bigger than themselves, about the choice to do that being the right choice. _Is he lecturing me or himself?_

Sarah was listening to Casey but her mind was racing, her heart thumping in her chest. It was not because of Beckman and Graham, although she did hate failure. It was not because of Casey, his intense glare, too intense. No, it was the words she had used, not just mentioned. No air-quotes. She had said 'family', 'children', and she was thinking of Chuck (' _husband'_ ). The future she was in and had been in since The Incident, since the kiss, was not transparent, not nearly, but she could see it through a glass, darkly. Herself and Chuck, a home, a family.

\- Why should it be true that she could not make him happy? He loved her. She cared about him. Why not? She had not kissed him by mistake. She was felt like she was living in the future - because her present no longer seemed fugitive, transient. Because her present opened up, open out, flowered toward a future. It was not enclosed in mission parameters. So, why not?

 _Why not? Because I am a spy. Only a spy. And because behind me is a past that bleeds into my present and my future. I can deny it and hide it, but it is not going away. I cannot assign it to anyone else, despite the fact that I did virtually none of it in my own name. An alias will not alienate what I have done from me, make it not-mine._

\- But Chuck flashed on my ring, and although he was shaken, he recovered. Actually, he dealt with the fact that he flashed on violent scenes of me, death scenes, better than I did. I recognized at the beginning that he is strong, rubber-band strong. Maybe he is strong enough for me, for all of me?

 _No. Because if he accepted you, all of you, he would be accepting your poison, darkening himself. And you are so afraid he will not accept it, will not be strong enough. You are not strong enough to overcome his failure of strength, should it happen. It would kill you._ _No. You should have taken Bryce's escape clause. Or you should have taken the first option Chuck gave you. Became his handler and nothing but his handler. You can't stay in these covers, this handler/asset cover and this boyfriend/girlfriend cover. The first is not real but you are pretending it is, the second is real but you are pretending it isn't._

She did not know what to do. But the negative voice in her head was no longer winning by default. That was something. Something new.

She told Casey she would talk to Chuck, and if she could not get through to him, she would ask to be re-assigned. The team had to succeed if she was going to stay in Burbank. If it could not, she would have to go - and better to do it on her terms, as much as she could, than on Beckman and Graham's.

She would get through to Chuck - but without telling him the truth. She had to figure out how. She was not ready to go.

ooOoo

But as things did around Chuck, events took their own track. Chuck's earlier flash was vindicated by a later one, and Sarah, despite the ambiguous status of his earlier flash, trusted his second one. They foiled Kirk and in the process saved Morgan and his girlfriend.

ooOoo

Chuck invited her to the Buy More Christmas party. She was hoping to talk to him there, but he did the talking. Most of it. He gave her a gift, thanking her for believing him. She tried to pass it off as her doing her job _(we both know it was not that, not just_ that), her job: the one thing, she said, she was good at. The whole mess with Bryce, she told Chuck, proved she was not good at relationships. And for once, Chuck did understand or understand enough. She did not mean that she had messed up her relationship with Bryce. She meant that Bryce's rebirth had further messed up her relationship with Chuck. But she was careful not to specify what she meant by 'relationship': handler/asset, boyfriend/girlfriend or...something more.

He offered his hand in friendship. Friendship was not all she wanted. Chuck was not sure about that, of course. She was sure that friendship was not all Chuck wanted. But he was strong enough to accept what she could give.

Jeff held mistletoe over them. But Sarah was not going to repeat the kiss. And Chuck seemed unwilling to do it too. What was done was done. Okay. He was willing to stop talking about it. She was unwilling to stop remembering it. She was tired of burying things, sick to death of it. It might take time but she was going to unlearn her Dad's lessons, Graham's lessons. She just needed time and practice, time to acquire new habits of living, thinking, imagining. A new way of being. She smiled at Chuck. She knew she was beaming.

 _He is wonderful. Even when I am deliberately confusing, when I make him use my Bellman's Map, he unerringly finds his way to something I need. I matter to him. His heart is like an Intersect of Sarah. Like he is psychic, a paranormal proponent of normality. I wish he could divine how much he matters to me. I am not in Burbank for the job, even if it is my assignment, even if the team is doing good and I am proud of that. I am here for him. I'm good here. I'm going to get better...at Chuck._

ooOoo

Chuck came into the Listening Room. He had a cup of coffee. He had a smile on his face; he looked good. Sarah had issued the invitation, called and asked if they could hang out. Maybe get dinner later.

She smiled up at Chuck from her chair, over her cup.

He gave her a funny look.

"What?" she asked.

"Jodi-with-an-i, she's acting weird. Pissy, I guess. I don't know what I did."

"I suspect it was something I did," Sarah said, laughing softly and shaking her head at both Chuck and at i-Jodi. "By the way, I call her 'i'-Jodi', but not to her face."

Chuck took his turn laughing and shaking his head. "So, 'i-Jodi'? He put the name in air-quotes. "That's good. How did I not think of that? Who said you aren't funny." They shared a momentary, significant glance. Her being funny. His air-quotes. Their first date. The kiss. The Incident. The kiss. But she knew he was not throwing any of that in her face. His gesture had been innocently made, despite its immediate significance to them both. Sarah felt herself blush. _Can't control that._ That made her blush more.

She gestured for Chuck to sit. He asked if she had chosen an album. She held out a copy of Michael Penn's _Resigned._ Chuck grinned. "Wow! Going deep into the eccentric, wordplay pop, aren't we? Let's see. Brother to Sean Penn. Husband of Aimee Mann. _Voices Carry._ "

Sarah clenched her brow. "Even in here, with the soundproofing?" Chuck looked puzzled then he understood. "No, no, _Voices Carry_ is a song by Aimee Mann's band, ' _Til Tuesday._ We can listen to that in a bit. I'm sure Jeremy has a copy. So, how did you find your way to Michael Penn?"

"I liked that song, _This and That._ I heard it a little on the radio, years ago. It came to mind. I looked him up and this is supposed to be a great album no one knows…"

Chuck nodded. "It is. Is there a particular song we should play?"

Sarah took the record from him and pointed to a song, _Out of My Hands._

Chuck nodded again. "I sorta remember that. I know his _Free-For-All_ album a lot better. Why that song?"

Sarah blushed again. "Because I looked the lyrics up online. I like them."

Chuck put the record on, placing the needle carefully on the fourth song. The bass riff started and Sarah leaned back, letting some of her internal pressures relax. She saw Chuck lean back in his chair and close his eyes.

Tears formed in hers, and she blinked them back. The lyrics started. She hoped Chuck listened to them.

She took so much from him. Yes, she kept him alive, but she wanted to give him so much more than she could give him. But she could give him this song. For Christmas. She could sit, in momentary peace, and share something with her guy.

Even if she could not say those final words out loud: 'My guy'.

Even if they had to dance away from the mistletoe.

* * *

 **A/N2** So ends my look at S1. Hope everyone who is celebrating holidays enjoys them!

I am going to try to take a break, a few days at least, before tackling S2. I will work through the episodes of it (the ones I intend to focus on) more as I have worked through Crown Vic in this chapter. There will also be one or two cover dates. And maybe a non-canon mission (no promises, though).

I hope that, despite the inner turmoils of this chapter, Sarah's monologue can be seen to be growing a little less paradoxical, a little less chaotic, a little more settled. She remains conflicted, but she is slowly - I know, _slowly_ \- coming to grips with herself.

This thing represents a huge effort and has made my head hurt figuratively and non-figuratively. I'd love to hear from you about it.


	27. Fount of Curses (One)

**A/N1** S2 is a long, sprawling season, up and down, sometimes written in fountain pen, sometimes in crayon. There's certainly more in it than I plan to contend with. I am going to pick my spots. Important to my spots is my intention to capture the time of the season from Sarah's POV. I take canon, as I have mentioned, to be told from Chuck's POV, and so its temporal organization is his. I want to capture Sarah's.

That does not mean I am changing the order of events (in objective time, clock-on-the-wall time), but it does mean that I will be grouping them differently (in subjective time, clock-in-Sarah's-head time, and that they will accordingly be assigned different weights.

For example, Bryce's reappearance is going to be significant for Chuck much as it was in S1. But for Sarah, it will be significant only because of the complications it creates between her and Chuck. Bryce is Chuck's problem. He is a part of the story of Sarah's problem, but he is not her problem. By the time he shows up in Burbank the second time, whatever vestigial feelings or confusions Sarah experienced during his first visit are no longer present. She knows where she stands.

I begin, then, four episodes into S2 - at the end of Break-Up, but in a non-canon scene.

Sarah's trying to discern a particular pattern in events. But her thoughts are jumpy. She is upset, deeply upset by the conversation at the fountain from earlier that evening. We will bounce around in time, back to Marlin and then work forward as Sarah contemplates events. First Date will be much of the focus of Chapter 28.

This is a hard slog. It will get better, but we still have the Jill and Cole valleys to cross, not to mention Prague and the S3 Hannah-Shaw Gorge. So, how about cheering us on our way with a review or PM?

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

 _Fount of Curses (Part One)_ :

Gains and Losses

* * *

My hands did not shake  
I'm a very good aim  
And I know I missed you  
Again and again  
Lose a lover  
Find another  
It's a cover up

You cover up  
A cover up

-Michael Penn, _Cover Up_

* * *

" _One thing you will never be, Sarah Walker, and that's a normal girl_."

Never. Never. Never.

Sarah walked out into the courtyard alone. She heard Chuck close the door. They had parted in awkward sadness. The fountain, as always, was there, bubbling away, doing its fountainy thing, although now it sounded more like blubbering than bubbling, as if it were sad too. She and Chuck had sat there earlier and he had said _that_ to her. That she would never be a normal girl. Sarah sat back down there now, sad and heavy. ' _Sad b_ _ooks in the blubbering brooks'. That's not the line, I know, but it fits._

Chuck did not say what he said to be hurtful; he even meant as a kind of compliment. He did not know it was unkind.

Chuck remained convinced that Sarah's pre-Burbank life had been a flashy spy movie, filled with consulate parties and beautiful gowns, dashing partners in tuxedos, _recherché_ drinks and pulse-pounding but not life-threatening dangers. He imagined that her life had been a shiny spectacle of chromatic color compared to his life's dull doldrums of greys and browns.

It was true that team's missions sometimes were like that, flashy, spy-movie-y. But they also had missions on which they crawled through sewers in search of information afloat in raw sewage. Somehow, Chuck never seemed to focus those missions, or to really consider even the little footage of her he had flashed on because of her blue ring.

She wanted him to know how hateful and vexed her life had mostly been, to know that coming to Burbank had been her coming in from the dark and cold, coming into light and warmth.

But she could not tell him that without giving too much away - without giving away things about her past she did not want him to know, or was not ready for him to know, without giving away...how much she cared about him. So she did not contradict him when he imagined her as a female Derek Flint. _Derica Flint? -_ _I correct no one about my past. I never want it to be the subject of discussion. To correct is to invite discussion of it. I let people believe what they want._ She did wish he would stop it: it made things harder between them, especially because his imagination always featured Bryce as the dashing partner in the tuxedo - and probably always involved Sarah and Bryce breaking into a bedroom. His imagination goaded Chuck's insecurities.

When Chuck said that, about her never being normal, he was being honest, of course. And it hurt. _Like hell_. As much as - more than - anything he had ever said to her. It felt like her hope was being bled out of her, the hope, that diehard hope, that had been with her since just before Burbank and that had found its target when she met Chuck.

The thought that she could not be normal was not news. She had thought as much to herself months ago, outside Emma's house, after depositing Molly there. And it had been on her mind in one form or another since she met Chuck. But it was one thing for _her_ to think it of herself, to think it herself, and completely another to have _Chuck_ think it of her. She wanted normal with him. She was trying to figure out what that was and how to have it, trying to change so that she could.

She cared about him. More than a friend. Way more. He knew that now. They never discussed it, but they knew there was something under the cover, and they both knew they both knew.

Chuck knew. Sarah had stopped denying it. (To Chuck. She continued to deny it to Beckman and Graham.) But she would not affirm it, not in so many words. She had said things that had that implication - but she had been careful never to make the inference, draw the conclusion. She would let Chuck do it if he would, but never to do it for him and never endorse the conclusion. But she never denied the conclusion. She was getting better at Chuck.

She had stopped denying the night Chuck nearly went to a bunker, the night of Longshore.

* * *

It was a long story. Shortened, there was reason to believe that Fulcrum had evidence that identified Chuck as the Intersect. Sarah had thought she had time to address the threat, but Beckman and Graham, in their infinite wisdom, decided that it would be better to be safe and make Chuck sorry. A CIA agent, Longshore, posing as law enforcement, had Chuck and was going to deliver him to be bunkered.

When Sarah found out, her blood became the icy slush that Carina had long ago jeered it was. She immediately went to stop the extraction. Of Chuck from his life. Of Chuck from her life.

She was in the Porsche, its engine screaming as she headed to the extraction point. She had no plan, except to stop the extraction by any means necessary. For Chuck's sake. For her sake too. Beckman and Graham were not going to take him from her. They were not going to put him in a dark hole and bleed flashes from him. She knew Graham. He and Sarah had managed to work together since Budapest, but she did not trust him. Or Beckman, for that matter. She suspected the made each other worse, each trying to be more heartless for the sake of the 'greater good' than the other.

Sarah arrived, the Porsche's brakes screeching. She barrelled from the car and got to the roof as fast as she could, cold desperation driving her into a sweat. She arrived just before Longshore put Chuck on the 'copter. _No, no, we haven't made it this far to end like this. I am here for him. I am_ here _for him._

"Longshore!" She yelled. She needed him to stop. He did. _Don't take my future. Don't do it._

She tried to reason with Longshore: This was a judgment call. They could wait to see what happened with Casey, who had gone after the mole, the collector of the evidence that identified Chuck.

"I will take full responsibility. He's my asset. He's my guy." _I did say those words out loud. But like this? As farewell?_

She looked at Chuck, then at Longshore. "Please, don't do this." Her hand curled around the grip of the S & W behind her back. Longshore gave them one minute. She let go of the gun. She moved cautiously toward Chuck as Longshore moved cautiously aside.

She looked at Chuck again.

He started talking. He did what he did, what heroes do: he thought about others, Ellie, Sarah. _Of course, he thinks of me._ He wanted her to comfort Ellie, try to help Ellie to deal with his disappearance. His friends. And then he found a silver lining, more for her than him. They could date in his cell. Maybe say how they really felt about each other. They joined hands, Chuck's cuffed, hers uncuffed, but none free. _Dating in a cell. Been there and done that already with Chuck. I want us out of the cell._

Longshore interrupted. Chuck started toward him but Sarah called Chuck's name. She told him she would save him later.

And then the mole showed up and shot Longshore. Sarah bested the mole and saved Chuck, and they were able to prove that the mole had not identified Chuck to anyone else. Chuck was safe.

Later, after taking Chuck home and watching through the window as he celebrated Ellie and Awesome's engagement with them, she went back to her place.

As soon as she closed her apartment door, her body began to tremble violently. Though she had controlled it, hidden it, she had experienced raw terror at the thought of losing Chuck. Her life felt wholly unhinged. She felt unhinged. She had not had to decide whether to shoot Longshore on the rooftop or to wait and break Chuck out of the bunker, but she had meant what she said, meant it with all of her: "Save you later" _Not a compromise. A promise._ She was ready to throw the CIA away, ready to go on the run, ready to do anything to keep Chuck. She was ready to die to save him, to keep him.

He was her future but she had no idea how that could work. He was the Intersect. She was his handler, his cover girlfriend. There seemed to be no path to a future with him. But he was her future. Somehow. Someway. Someday.

That was when she stopped denying. She knew Chuck. Once he had a chance to think, he would piece together what had happened, the significance of her being there, of her reaching behind her back. She stopped denying. She did not start affirming. Neither Yes nor No. But no more No.

She was committed. She was not going to let him be taken from her.

* * *

Sarah sat on the cold stones of the fountain. The lights in Chuck's apartment had gone out. They had ended up in tonight's fountain conversation because of Bryce, because of Bryce coming to town.

Not that it was about Bryce. It was not. Bryce was not the problem. Well, he was a problem for Chuck, but Chuck was mistaken about Bryce.

* * *

Sarah had chosen Chuck when she could have chosen Bryce.

Yes, she told Chuck that she stayed because of the job, the assignment, as if she had not really had a choice. But she did. If she had left with Bryce, she would not have been going rogue or even AWOL. Beckman and Graham had approved her leaving with Bryce. That was why he invited her, gave her the 'Omaha' code word. He let her know where he was going and to let her know he had approval.

Casey had recognized it. He and she had talked briefly about it a few days later and he told her (with a meaningful glance) that he was not surprised she had stayed. That she was free to go was part of the reason, he told her, that he asked her earlier if she had compromised herself with the Intersect.

She had chosen to stay when she was permitted to leave; there had to be an explanation (another meaningful glance). Chuck was not clear about that, and of course Sarah never helped him to clarity, instead, she talked about her job and her assignment. Casey had not helped Chuck with it either; he stayed out of it. Turned a blind eye. _Although he was willing to help when Longshore was taking Chuck._

* * *

Bryce had come back to Burbank for Sarah. It was not the only item on his agenda, of course. He had a mission.

But his mission had given him the chance to approach her again. Evidently, her having chosen not to go with Bryce had started Bryce pondering her refusal, and pondering her reasons. She could have left; he had secured her permission to go. So her refusal, once the unexpected shock of it wore off, made him start thinking. He came to suspect that she had stayed because of Chuck. So he had come back not just for her, but to take her from Chuck.

The friendship between the two men was a puzzle to Sarah. She had a hard time, really, understanding how they had become friends. They shared interests, obviously. Computers, computer games. They had been in the same fraternity. Bryce seemed like a fraternity guy; Chuck, not so much - not that Sarah had anything more than stereotypes to work with. Bryce was smart, but not brainy. Chuck was brainy, really brainy. But the thing that struck Sarah most was that Chuck had a genius for friendship, for people. Even the Buy More crew, the perverse Jeff and Lester, for example, looked up to him, liked him. Bryce had no such genius. She doubted Bryce had many friends, real friends, if any. It was obvious to anyone who knew them both who the better person was, the better man. It was Chuck. ( _How the hell could that Jill woman have gotten that wrong? - What was I doing with Bryce?_ )

Although Chuck had obvious insecurities about Bryce - understandable, not because Bryce was the better man, but because of what had happened at Stanford - Sarah came to realize on Bryce's second Burbank visit that he had insecurities where Chuck was concerned. He did not voice them or demonstrate them obviously in his behavior, but at some level, she knew Bryce believed Chuck was the better man. But Bryce had gotten in his shots, worked his return so as to make Chuck miserable. Events had given Bryce a helping hand.

ooOoo

Sarah had been in her apartment, trying to center herself. Chuck made that a regular occurrence. Roan Montgomery's visit, Chuck's seduction mission, they had her tense and a little wild. But mainly, it had been Chuck saving Sarah as he had, dropping like a superhero from the sky, trailing a Buy More cape, saving her like that after kissing her like that.

Another kiss.

Roan had pushed them into the kiss. They both tried to resist. But it had happened, with all the predictable bomb-like effects. Sarah had no idea how far the blast radius reached, but she knew its center. The kiss melted Sarah into a wringing mess of emotion and desire. She had to excuse herself and go to the bathroom when it was over. She had said it was to straighten her lipstick but it was to straighten herself. She went to the bathroom, chanting mentally: "Kiss, kiss, kiss." _Stop thinking 'kiss'! Fix your face and...adjust your...pants. Breathe, don't pant. Pants. Oh, Chuck, my God! You undo me._

She had still been trying to recover from the kiss and the heroism when there was a knock at the door. _Chuck?_

If it was Chuck, she should not answer. In her current state, damp, bothered, with her bed there in the midst of the room, waiting, with her heart aching...It would be a bad idea - because _it_ would happen. All he would have to do was ask, or touch her, and she would be gunpowder touched by a spark. The explosion that always threatened between them, no bomb but still a product of outrageous chemistry, would detonate. She tiptoed to her door. And then a voice, medium-loud: "Honey, I'm home!"

 _Shit. Bryce. What the hell is he doing here?_

He had heard her tiptoe, of course. He was a good spy and she had not been expecting to find a spy at her door, she had been expecting to find Chuck. Baited - and switched. She huffed to herself but then opened the door.

Bryce had his smile on _full-lighthouse_ even before the door was open. It suddenly struck her that his smile, like his kisses, was too knowledgeable, too...practiced. When Chuck smiled at her, he smiled with his whole body, expressing delight or pleasure...or love.

But although Chuck knew she would see the smile, the smile was not there to be looked at, not gazingstock. No process of thought or training had inserted itself between Chuck's emotions and his expressions. Not so with Bryce. He was all gazingstock. Thought, practice, the Farm, inserted itself between what he felt and his expressions. _Maybe I always noticed that but just didn't pay attention. Maybe that was why I could never trust him completely, despite wanting to. - Do I seem like that to Chuck? No, no, because I just never express my emotions, or only when I get angry or when I think the context keeps them from being fully readable. But mostly I just do not express them. Ice Queen. Poor Chuck, in love with an ice sculpture: me. How does he keep warm?_

Bryce reached out for her. She stepped back into the apartment and he almost stumbled as he overbalanced. Sarah suppressed a smile. She turned and walked further into the apartment. Bryce returned to the hallway to grab his suitcase and carry it in, after closing the door.

 _Suitcase?_

Sarah gestured at it. "Just what do you think is going to happen here, Bryce?"

He gave her his expectant grin. "I'm going to shack up with you for a few days." When she started to protest, he waved her off. "Just a figure of speech."

He quickly took in the room. "Same as before. But you aren't the home-making type, eh, Mrs. Anderson?" He paused, taking in the room a second time, making it obvious, pointed. Then he asked: "Where's Chuck?"

The implication was patent. Something was going on between her and Chuck. Bryce suspected it. The mention of home-making yoked to the mention of Chuck - to make her know his suspicions and to make sure she knew he thought what he suspected was hopeless. If she was interested in Chuck, it would not work. He would never choose someone like her as his partner for life, his wife, the mother of his children. She was the wrong type. Not Chuck's type.

It was like Bryce had punched her. She was immediately furious. But she could not show it. Bryce had said it like that to see if he could get a rise out of her. She swallowed her fury and gave Bryce her practiced smile (she had one for missions). "Why would Chuck be here? We aren't prepping for a mission. There is no reason for him to be here."

Bryce seemed simultaneously pleased and unappeased.

ooOoo

There was a knock on the door. _Oh, no._

Before Sarah could react, Bryce wheeled, a glint in his eye. Sarah stepped past him quickly, almost running, getting to the door ahead of him. In the hallway stood Chuck, holding a rose, in a white dinner jacket. _Montgomery's idea, although…I like it._

"Chuck!" She tried to sound surprised, and maybe she did, a little, but she was having a hard time catching up despite beating Bryce to the door. And then Bryce put his hand on the door and pulled it open, revealing himself. _Chuck brought me a rose. Chuck coming to the door like this, with Bryce here, especially given what I just said, is a disaster. But if Bryce weren't here, there would have been another kind of disaster, one that would happen in my bed. I don't think I could take that back if it happened, but it would ruin us, ruin the team. I would be gone, reassigned._

Bryce, wearing a winner's smile, making another obvious point, this time to Chuck: I'm in here and you aren't. Then Bryce drove the point home. "Hey, Chuck, miss me?"

Sarah had to give Chuck credit. Maybe he was not a spy, but he covered well. Despite being crestfallen, he extended the rose to Bryce. "Sweets for the sweet." The incongruity of his comment threw Bryce; he lost focus.

In that moment, Chuck turned to Sarah with a smile (forced, not practiced, but good enough). "Hey, Sarah, sorry for stopping by unannounced. I wouldn't _normally_...but you know that. I just was...at a party at a buddy's place nearby, a Clash-themed party. Yeah, I know, London quit Calling years ago - but he's a fan. Anyway, I saw this rose as I was leaving and thought I would take it to Ellie. But I thought it would be okay if I stopped by, told you about the party. Part of your musical education." He looked at Bryce, innocence personified. "We've been listening to some pop music to have something to do on cover dates. I'm not exciting."

Chuck had continued to hold the rose out to Bryce through the speech, dividing Bryce's attention between it and what Chuck was saying. Sarah suppressed another smile when Bryce finally took the rose. He was looking at it, puzzled, when Chuck took it back. "Sorry, Bryce, you really aren't _that_ sweet. For my sister. Well, Sarah, I see you have company, so I will leave you...to it." He turned on his heel and walked away. _Taking my rose with him._

Sarah's intuition flashed as he walked away. Maybe he had the makings of a spy, after all, some of the gifts, but, oh, God, please don't let him change, don't let him want _that_. It would be my fault.

Bryce was still confused, but Sarah sent him to a hotel without having to answer the question of Chuck again. Bryce did tell her he was in town because of his mission, because of the Intersect, but his annoyance at being sent away (he had brought his suitcase, after all) made him mum on the details. He left her wondering what was going on.

ooOoo

The next morning Sarah was in Castle early for a briefing. She had come early hoping to get a chance to interact with Chuck before Bryce showed up. She did not know what to expect, but she knew last night must have been more miserable for him than it had been for her, and it had been pretty miserable for her. All that she had been feeling before Bryce arrived, then Bryce's arrival, then Chuck's arrival, then their two departures - she felt like the emotional equivalent of a revolving door, spinning in place, no control over the speed of her rotation or who passed through.

Chuck showed up, predictably trying to be upbeat. But before Sarah could say anything, Beckman videoed in and began the briefing. For a moment, Sarah thought perhaps Bryce had just been a courier of information and that maybe he would not be involved anymore. Beckman talked about the cover for the mission - a married couple. Chuck brightened and Sarah brightened with him. This would give her a chance to try to make it clear that she had not known Bryce was coming, had not had anything to do with his showing up, that her feelings for Bryce, her romantic feelings, were done. That Bryce spent the night in a hotel.

She would have to do it carefully, of course, not give too much away. But she was good at that, and she had been steadily getting better at Chuck. Her ways of thinking, feeling, and imagining, her imagination itself, they were changing. The more time she spent with him, the more those things changed. The change was slow. She had been miseducated for so long. But she was unlearning her old lessons and learning new ones. But it was hard to break habits, harder than acquiring them. And the habits she wanted to break were habits she needed to be effective on the team, effective as Chuck's protector. So she was in the unenviable position of trying to rehabituate herself while still relying on her old habits. Still, as paradoxical as that sounded, it was not a practical impossibility. As her Dad said, everything has two handles - she discovered that included habits. She was trying to take up her habits by the other handle, to hold them differently. It was working, slowly.

Chuck was smiling and she found herself smiling back naturally, caught up in his excitement. And then Beckman ruined the moment. Sarah was to pose as Bryce's wife, the cover wife of a real spy.

Bryce arrived a moment later, making one of his trademark entrances. Sarah continued to smile but now it was forced, not natural. Bryce joined them at the table and, as Beckman finished her description of the op, he slid a wedding set onto Sarah's finger. _The goddamn Andersons._ And he made sure Chuck got to see it. Beckman was watching and so Sarah had to force herself to seem as excited about this as she had about posing with Chuck. Chuck collapsed in on himself. This time he could not hide it, pass it off as anything but a disappointment. Bryce noted it. He kissed Sarah's hand. "Good to have that ring back where it belongs." He smiled at Sarah but for Chuck.

 _The universe hates me. But I guess I deserve it._

And then Beckman added: "And, Bryce, for the cover, you will need to stay with Sarah in her apartment." Bryce's winner's smile came back. Chuck saw it then dropped his head and stared at the floor. Luckily, he could not see Sarah's heart there too. Bryce added. "See, shacking up!"

ooOoo

She tried to make it up to Chuck.

She put on a salmon dress to wear to the party that the Andersons were attending. But Chuck was going too, as a waiter. He would be able to enjoy the dress. Sarah knew she was stunning in it. She waited to appear until Chuck was there and, despite knowing it would feed Bryce's suspicions, Sarah wanted Chuck to know the dress was for him first, the party second, and not _for_ Bryce at all. She was not sure how to communicate all that; she was going to try. But Bryce had, she realized later, been playing up the Anderson's living arrangement, their 'shacking up'- and Chuck recoiled from the dress, not understanding the gesture, taking it to be for Bryce first, for the party second, and not _for_ him. The reaction she had wanted to provoke in him, for him and for herself, she did not provoke. Instead, she provoked anger and coldness. Chuck rejected the gesture.

Sarah felt the disappointment swamp her before she could cover it. Why had she thought she could make the gesture clear? It was like she was in a cloud of Maine black flies (that had happened to her once on a mission), but trying to wave at a friend who could see her plight, and who took her to be shooing the flies away, not waving. She kept making gestures that Chuck could not understand, colored-coded gestures that went sadly wrong. _Lilac, now salmon._

ooOoo

The mission went off the rails. Chaos. Sarah ended up in the hospital with a concussion. Chuck. But she had saved him. He showed up with flowers for her.

She was so glad to see him that she could have cried. Everything had been such a mess since Bryce got to town. The mission had frustrated her. Bryce had taken every opportunity to be the Anderson's, to touch her, touch her possessively, and to make sure Chuck witnessed every touch. Bryce had not been happy with Sarah's business-only demeanor, by her unwillingness to let him run the mission as he wanted. She knew he wanted to run the mission by keeping it pointed at Chuck. She had to play along to an extent. Not only was she a professional, but Chuck's safety, and maybe the long-term viability of her team, her assignment in Burbank, all depended on the mission working out. She could see Chuck take body-blow after body-blow during the evening.

But here he was, nonetheless, flowers in hand, bouncing back, as he did. Flowers in hand. She had not gotten her rose. But these flowers she could take, accept. Flowers from her guy.

Bryce complicated that too, though. Sarah had forgotten the profusion of expensive bouquets Bryce had sent her. ( _Of course, he sent them. Chuck came himself._ ) She had not really thought about Bryce's flowers. Chuck had brought her gardenias, her favorite. ( _Bryce just sent the most expensive bouquets. He had no idea about my favorite flower. Chuck's heart, the Intersect of Sarah._ ) She mentioned that they were her favorite. Chuck told her he was not a completely incompetent spy. _No, you aren't. I have seen you in action. I saw your response to Bryce at my door. You can do this. But don't._

Chuck turned and saw the profusion of flowers. "Bryce Larkin. I guess no matter what I do, I will always finish second to that guy."

 _This is your chance, Sarah. You don't have to affirm anything specific, no need for lilac or salmon, just speak._

"Not always."

It was not much to give him. But this time, the situation, the context, worked in her favor. Chuck responded as she hoped. He stood a little taller and smiled. He got a nurse, a friend of his sister's, to bring a vase for the gardenias, and she had him put them right next to her, not over among the ones from Bryce. They talked. She found a way to slip in the fact that Bryce had not spent a night with her at her apartment.

 _Not always, Chuck. He is past, he is my past. You are my dear, impossible future._

* * *

The _future._ That was the problem. That was the real problem.

Not her inability to take the shot, despite the worry that created, in Sarah as well as Casey. But she also understood its personal, and not just its professional significance. She had taken such a shot when Bryce was endangered. She took it without hesitation and she felt good about it. He congratulated her on it. She never imagined that her ability to do that, while professionally impressive, revealed the deeper emptiness of the Andersons.

ooOoo

"...Never be a normal girl."

Never. Never. Never.

She had thought it. Chuck had said it.

"...Not the homey-type." Bryce had said that.

Sarah dropped her face in her hands, her tears wetting them, as the water bubbled and blubbered in the fountain.

 _Goddamn it. Goddamn it. Goddamn it._

* * *

 **A/N2** This whole sequence is really one long chapter, but I have divided it up to make reading a little easier. But keep in mind the whole thing occurs (and recurs) as Sarah sits next to the apartment complex fountain. Tune in next time, Chapter 28 "Fount of Curses: A Really Real Date".

In all the dust kicked up by Nemesis, it is easy to miss that Sarah is not sneaking away to join Bryce. She is obviously being permitted to go. Chuck never gets this entirely, mainly because Sarah works to hide it from him, its obvious significance from him. When he tells her he expects her to be "halfway to Bryce" (what a great phrase that is in context), she responds by making it sound as though the job kept her there, leaving Chuck to take her meaning to be that she really had no choice but to stay. She did have a choice, though. From Sarah's POV this is obvious, I suppose, but I do think the viewer's understandable tendency _(mea_ _culpa_!) to see Sarah through Chuck's eyes obscures it. The "I only stayed for the job" is all part of Sarah's Crown Vic effort to reassert the handler/asset dynamic between her and Chuck. Whatever the viewer thinks Sarah feels for Bryce, it turns out not to be enough for her to leave Chuck, even when she could.


	28. Fount of Curses (Two)

**A/N1** Onward. The slightly shorter other part of Fount of Curses. Sarah's struggling. Not everything she thinks makes perfect sense. She's trying to make sense, to make sense of things. Give the woman a break.

I'm going dark until next week. Kids to see. Guitar to play. Hang tight, folks. Tell the folks you love how you feel.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

 _Fount of Curses (Part Two)_ :

 _A Really Real Date?_

* * *

Scared of love, love and swimming pools  
Falling in you said was for fools  
But when you're standing on the edge  
You won't hear me because your blood is singing  
Jump, jump go ahead and jump, jump  
If it's what your heart is wanting to do  
This is real life you're dreaming through

And there is no glue to hold you down, so go ahead and...  
Go ahead and jump

Scared of love, love, and aeroplanes  
Falling out I said takes no brains  
But if your flight is going rough  
Your soul will lead you to the nearest exit

Jump, jump...

While you're waiting  
Time is grinning  
Clocks and watches laughing at your indecision  
While you're waiting  
Worlds are spinning  
Find another heart and drive into collision

Knowing this can you tell me you're...

Scared of love, love and swimming pools

Stubbornness, I say is for mules  
But if you're standing on the edge  
You won't hear me because your blood is singing

-XTC, _Jump_

* * *

Behind her, the fountain continued its blubbering but Sarah stopped hers.

She wiped her eyes and tried to look ahead.

The future.

For most of her time in Burbank, most of her time with Chuck, it was her past that she was focused on - but in the sense of trying to obscure it, keep it from everyone ( _as always_ ) but especially from Chuck. His flash on her ring had mortified her. She had done her best since then to keep from having to say much of anything about her prior life.

The past.

Sarah was coming to understand some bitter things about herself. W _hy isn't self-knowledge ever sweet?_ One of the most important was that she compartmentalized time. The time of her life. She treated the past and the present and the future as somehow linked, but not as sharing with each other, open to each other, as if time were a train, engine, boxcar, caboose, instead of a stream, moving and intermingled waters.

Her father had taught her that. Taught her to treat time like that. But she suspected now that she learned it before he started her explicit lessons, that she had started it when her family fell apart, when she and her dad left her mom. She had not known how to _experience_ that, much less how to turn her experience into words.

And so she had - shifting to her Dad's metaphor, darkly prophetic - _buried_ the experience.

She had not allowed herself to have that experience, much less to understand it, to word it. She buried it. She buried it _alive._ But it had never died. Instead, it scratched at the wood of its makeshift casket and cried out to her in inarticulate pain whenever she slowed down or stopped.

That was why she let Graham drive her so hard, why she drove herself so hard. Because she had taken so many experiences in her life and buried them, buried them alive. And they were all still _there_ , undead, scratching, scratching, scratching. Muted screams and anguished cries. Coming into contact with her past was walking past a graveyard of things buried alive, still living. She could barely hear her own whistle. To acknowledge the cemetery, to answer the cries, would have meant having the experiences, living them.

She mostly did not acknowledge the cemetery. Except she kept whistling. Kept working. Kept moving. When she was not whistling, she covered her ears.

 _Hands over ears. Hands over ears! Nya, nya! Can't hear you! Can't hear you!_

She had thought she could make that work.

And she had, sort of, haltingly and miserably, for years. But now that she found herself wanting a future, she found that the past was getting harder to ignore. It was as if every time she turned to face the future, one of those buried-alive experiences crawled out and found the light. She could only keep them interred by never quite forgetting them. She did not want to face them but she could not just turn her back on them. She had to hold this awkward posture: trying to see the future while checking over her shoulder.

And...

And...she knew why they would not die. Because she was alive.

Because they were _her._

She was buried in plots all over the graveyard.

All the headstones bore her name.

* * *

She started understanding on the real date she shared with Chuck.

The date they shared when it looked like he was free...and she was going to be re-assigned. The new Intersect was ready. Chuck was no longer the only Intersect. He was last year's model, in fact, or soon would be.

Sarah wanted to be happy for him and she was, very happy for him. But she was unhappy for herself. Her corpse dream had started again after the breakup in the Wienerlicious. It had stopped after the Buy More Christmas Party.

She was sure now that Chuck was the reason, although she had sort of known that all along. But she did not know how it worked, and why he could do it.

Even though Chuck knew so little about her, he knew so much about her. He was the Intersect of Sarah but running on a trickle of data. Yet, when he looked at her, in that multilayered hot-and-sweet way he did, she felt _whole._ Like he saw her with whole-sight, saw her steadily, saw her whole. _All of me. But he can't. He doesn't know._ Still, his gaze embraced her, past, present and future, and those three things started to run together, to intermingle. From a train to a river. It frightened her. Badly. But it was also exhilarating and liberating. That part of her that had broken free continued to gain strength.

But Chuck's freedom threatened hers. Because if he were truly free, released by the government, released by Beckman and Graham, then she would be Graham's again. He would expect his Enforcer to return to her old job. All the gains in Burbank would be lost.

There would be no way to remain the woman she was becoming if she became the spy she had been.

She tried to keep from showing all that to Chuck. She did not want to spoil his euphoria. She knew he was carrying an underlying unhappiness too, about losing her. He had had hopes. But she knew that he understood so much less about how she really felt than she did about how he really felt. He was not sure about her; he thought that maybe, at some level, she was happy. That his freedom was her freedom. Finally. Free of the nerd. Free of Burbank. Free to be Derica Flint.

But he did not want them to just end. As he had when he faced Longshore and the bunker, he tried to make it better. He asked her out. For real. For true. She knew: for the love of her. He passed it off as a night of fun - and she was sure it would be that, she always loved their cover dates, their...dates - but she knew he wished it was the beginning, not the end. It seemed to Sarah that they had been given one beginning but forced through multiple endings. _In my beginning are my ends. Endings. Ends._

Beginnings and endings.

The future and the past.

Sarah should have said No. Spared them both the sweet sorrow of a first and final date. But she could not refuse. Worse, she could not stop trying to think of a way to keep her job and to keep Chuck. While quitting the CIA was not as simple as quitting other jobs - and it would have special complications for her, Graham would see to that - she could do it. She could finally say No to the spy life. But her time in Burbank had made that solution seem harder, not easier.

She did not want just to be released from the machinations of Graham and the bleakness of the spy life, she wanted a real life after it, a normal life. She knew who she wanted it with. She wanted that life with Chuck. Not just that life. That life with him. He was now part of what she wanted. She wanted normality, yes. But she wanted Chuck-normality, not normality in and of itself. _Huh. I had never quite realized that until now. I don't want two things, normality, and Chuck. I want one thing: normal-with-Chuck. I know what I want and who I want it with, but, for me, that's knowing one thing._

She had hoped to stay in the life until she had found a strategy for using the life to escape from the life, taking Chuck with her. Like her problem with her habits, she needed the very life she hoped to stop living.

If she left now, where would she go? Who would she have? How would she live? What kind of normal was open to her? She feared to end up doing what she had learned to do but doing it freelance. She had always feared that. Fear. The truth was that as much as she disliked the spy life, she felt a primal terror when she considered living it. She feared she was a one-trick pony, in Carina's twisted sense of 'trick'.

Chuck, Burbank, Ellie and Devon, even Casey and Morgan, they had made her believe she could become someone who could face the prospect of a non-spy life, who could reimagine herself. She had not done it yet, though. But now they were all being taken from her. Burbank would be a memory.

Unless she fought it. She had money and other identities. She could leave, but then re-establish contact with Chuck once the government had officially separated from him. Graham gave her a lot of latitude. She could come back to Chuck as Rebecca or as Katie. She could squeeze him into Graham's schedule.

 _Damn._ Maybe that could work, but it would be as frustrating as cover dating. He would not know where she was most of the time, could not know what she was doing.

She said Yes to the date. Despite everything. She wanted it as much as Chuck did, maybe more. Because on their previous dates, their cover dates, she had always been wrapped in a lie, pretending to be cover dating him when she was dating him. She wanted once to just date him, for him to know they were really on a date, from the beginning of the evening until the end. She wanted him to touch her when she was no longer wrapped in a lie.

And that brought her to the most urgent question about the date. How should it end?

She had chosen her dress, a little black dress. But what should she wear under it? No weapons. This was a real date. No guns. No knives. They had been dating for months from her point of view. They had never exactly dated yet from Chuck's. Should she plan for them to come back to her place and to take Chuck to her bed? The thought made her tremble; she got gooseflesh. She wanted him so much and had for so long. She knew he wanted her.

But what would he think? What did he want? As much as she wanted him in her bed, wanted to feel his weight on top of her, to wrap her arms around his broad shoulders and her legs around his waist...as much as she wanted _that_ ( _and a bunch of other things that sprang to mind in an upsurge of images_ ), would it be fair to either of them?

She was not sure she could come back to him, not sure he would want that sort of relationship. He hated the cover dating. What she could give him would be real, but stretched so thin it might as well be mere appearance. Would making...would sleeping with him make anything better (other than the obvious) or would it make everything worse? She did not know, and when he showed up to take her out, she left the issue open. _Not a helpful term, Sarah._

Because the universe hated her, and because she deserved it, the issue never got settled. Or it got settled by being rendered moot. The date became an attack. Casey saved them, but nothing got settled.

* * *

Earlier, when she and Chuck talked by the fountain, the unsettled issues came up. They had been on Chuck's mind too.

He understood that her failure to take the shot was a professional problem. He knew it was personally rooted. But he seemed more upset about it than she would have thought. So much so that as he gathered himself to say what he wanted to say, his beginning phrase was "I'm going to shoot straight." _He's not trying to be hurtful. He just doesn't hear his own phrase in context, but I know what is on his mind. Could Bryce…?_ But he went on before she could follow her thought to completion.

He had thought about her idea, about her coming back to him as Rebecca or Katie. Like her, he had taken that to be as bad as cover dating. With his usual gift for expression, he told her that a long-distance relationship between a CIA agent and Buy More Nerd Herder would never work.

But it was not just the long distances that bothered him. It was also what he took to be the disparity in their jobs, their lives. She would be out in the world, doing important and dangerous and glamorous work. He would be noodling away in obscurity with Morgan. She thought about correcting him, finally, about her spy life, but then he turned to the real reason why a long-distance relationship would never work.

Because she would still be a spy. She would not be able to tell him anything - nothing about herself, her past, her work, her location. He would be dating someone he did not know. How did he put it? Even if our relationship was real, it would not be really real. Why? Because, although he never said this, she would not be his. She would belong to the CIA, to Graham. He would be an affair, a repeat fling, but never hers. She would be cheating on the CIA with him.

He told her all this in an "It's not you, it's me"-tone. He believed that. He took himself to be the source of the problem. He was not enough for her. Not exciting enough. Not handsome enough. Not successful enough. Just - not enough. He was giving her an out, letting go of what they both knew was under the covers. _No, Chuck, it's not you, it's me. I am the one who can't get there, get to where you need me to be. Maybe I could have. But if I go back to working as the Enforcer, I will yield to the grip of the frost, I will have to. I will be the Ice Queen again. And all this thaw, slow but real, will just re-freeze._

* * *

Sarah knew this because of what happened.

She thought Chuck had died and, as a result, she had been flash frozen. The massive man who attacked them during their first real date, Colt, had threatened to drop Chuck to his death in their first run-in with him. On their second, he had done it. Dropped Chuck. Like a water balloon. Casually. Sarah became arctic with a white-cold rage. She was going to kill Colt for killing Chuck. For killing her world. She was going to kill him. Enraged grief, immediate and irresistible, drove tears from her eyes, and she fought Cole, looking for an opening to administer the _coup de grâce_. The fight stopped when Chuck returned with reinforcements. Casey had caught him after Colt dropped him.

Sarah had kissed Casey's cheek quickly, lightly, when they were alone later, although neither said anything. She was careful to offer no explanation. Casey looked a little odd to Sarah, extra distant, maybe upset, but she did not know what was on his mind.

Sarah had recovered a bit by the time Chuck arrived with the reinforcements. He did not see her reaction, her desperation and rage. But Sarah knew what losing Chuck would mean, because she thought she had, and she had immediately become the Enforcer. No, worse than the Enforcer. The Enforcer deprived of hope, of heart, of any chance for a meaningful life. Soulless. Wholly dedicated to death. The white-cold rage dissipated, but Sarah knew she would never forget it.

ooOoo

They decided to try again, another attempt at a real date. But where the first first-real-date never got an ending, the second first-real-date never got to begin.

The Cipher, the piece of the Intersect that had the team had been chasing around, was finally in Graham's hands. He was finally going to have the Intersected agents he wanted. The Cipher got to Graham and it turned out to be a Fulcrum plot. A bomb. The blast killed all of Graham's targeted Intersect agents. And it killed Graham.

Sarah felt sorry for the agents, but it would have been a lie to say that she felt sorry for Graham. But, _because the universe hates me and I deserve it_ , the explosion that killed Graham put Chuck off-limits. He did not become last year's model. For the foreseeable future, he was the only model, the only Intersect, and the old structure of handler/asset, and cover dating.

That was bad for Chuck. Not so bad for Sarah, although she hated it for him. But they had gone on, as they had before they thought Chuck might be replaced. And it had been working until Bryce showed up, and until Sarah could not take the shot. How could she risk Chuck knowing what she knew after Cole dropped him? He was precious to her past all reckoning.

* * *

After Chuck gave his "It's not you, it's me" speech, Sarah knew that his deepest fears about them were on display. His conviction that he could not be enough for her.

When she finally spoke, she tried to comfort him; he had done it so often for her. She told him that when she was gone, he would forget her. That was her deepest fear. That she was a momentary aberration in his life, a disturbance, that he would forget when his life returned to normal. He told her she would never be normal. He wanted a normal life. She would not fit. Maybe Bryce was right. She was not the right type. An abnormal peg in a normal hole. She would fall through without a trace and Chuck would forget her. Forget her, as if she had never been real. And maybe she had never been real - never real with him, anyway, never really with him.

Even their real dates never made it to really real.

 _Never. Never. Never_.

* * *

She got up, her legs stiff from sitting for so long. Her bottom was numb, cold. There was almost no sound in the courtyard except for the fountain. Bubble, bubble.

The night had hurt. Chuck had not fake broken up with her. He had broken up with her - at the deeper level, at the level of what they both knew was beneath the cover. The thing she would not affirm Chuck negated. He had told her, in effect, that they had no future. The cover dating would go on but it would just be that, cover dating. _Goddamn it._

She started slowly out of the courtyard. Why hurry home? All that awaited was her corpse dream.

In a fit of black humor - what else was left to her? - she whistled in the dark as she walked away.

* * *

 **A/N2** So ends Fount of Curses. Tune in next time for a cheerier escapade: Chapter 29, "Reunion". How about some feedback?


	29. Reunion

**A/N1** Cheerfulness breaks in. Sunshine! Go, Cougars!

(Back sooner than expected. I've been sick. Nothing to do but write. So, here's another chapter.)

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

 _Reunion_

* * *

Pity you  
You're telling me you've got a problem  
A nervous sort of contraction  
A mindless kind of reaction  
You never get no satisfaction

Here's to you  
I know you really got a problem  
A nasty kind of reflection  
A dangerous sort of destruction  
That makes it difficult  
Makes it hard to reach  
Takes it all away  
From what you had in mind

Yeah, yeah, yeah

\- Devo, _Pity You_

* * *

Sarah did not have the corpse-dream after the fountain. She expected it; it did not come. Never shambled into her sleep. The misery she expected never fully overtook her, either.

It was her turn to figure something out. Her thoughts and feelings had been so jumpy, so jumbled, at the fountain. A lot of what she thought was true; but some of it wasn't even false. Some of it was probably just rigamarole, nonsense.

But the fountain conversation and her reflections by it later proved to be a watershed moment for Sarah.

She realized the next day that although Chuck had broken up with her, they were still together. He could not make what was there under the cover go away now (after Bryce's second visit), no more than she had been able to do it then (after Bryce's first visit), and although he had confessed things that hurt and frightened her, he had confessed things that she knew hurt and frightened him too.

He had not so much broken up with her as he had given her a description of why being together - even kept under the cover - was not a good idea, not prudent. _No future in it._

But that had been true from the first day, true in the Buy More.

Whatever had gotten Chuck worried about her safety had perhaps, in the long run, done Sarah a favor. She now had a much better understanding of where she stood and of where Chuck stood. They were both so desperate to be together, really together, that they forgot to _be together_ \- at least together as they could, given cameras and bugs and watching eyes and suspicious superiors.

They _were_ a couple, just not a normal couple. That was truer now than it had been when she first said it. They were real. Their...feelings...were _real_. The feelings had to be real to create real fear. And the fears were real. Confessing those fears to each other, their fears about how they could not, should not, be together, had been a tacit admission (by both) that they were, the closest they had ever come to actually saying aloud (to each other) that they were. It took Sarah a while to figure that out, but she had.

ooOoo

Sarah was walking through the apartment complex. She was there to pick up Chuck. They were on their way to San Diego, to her high school reunion. It was a mission, of course, and a complicated story involving, of all people, Sarah's nemesis, Heather Chandler.

The run-up to the mission had been...stormy. Chuck's point at the fountain about how he would never know anything about her had been a weight on Sarah's heart. The thought of him knowing about her and her Dad, about knowing the full reality of her spy life and work for Graham, that still terrified her. Angered her. _Anger-terror, kinda my thing._ _Did I really stab our picture with a pencil, reacting to Chuck's desire to know something about me? Jesus, I did. Way to stay in control, Sarah. Some Ice Queen I am._

But she also _wanted_ him to know her. His loving her without knowing anything about her struck her as a miracle. She did not want to undo that miracle. It was precious. A gift. She had told Carina long ago that what she needed could not be taken. She had spoken beyond what she knew or understood when she said it, spoken out of sheer intuition.

She was beginning to understand now.

She was not _there_ yet, but she could feel her pending arrival. Arriving at an understanding about what she had really been asking Chuck to do when she asked him on the beach to trust her, to give her that gift.

There was a logic to gifts. Sarah was beginning to understand that better too. She still did not know what to do about the specter of her past, but she was feeling less panicked about it now than she had, anger-terror aside. Chuck was still there. She was still there. Despite everything, they were still...they still cared about each other. He loved her. Each was willing to give up so much for the other, to suffer so much. And they were _still_ cover dating. Like now, they were posing as a couple as they headed to San Diego, to Sarah's reunion.

Sarah heard familiar music coming from Chuck's room, so she bypassed the front door and made her way to the Morgan Door. She looked inside. Chuck had a record on his turntable. She saw the cover. It was the Devo, _New Traditionalists_ , from their first cover date. The song playing was _Through Being Cool._ Sarah could tell it was the same exact copy of the record they had listened to at _Pressing and Grinding_. But Chuck had not bought it that night. He must have gone back. But why? She had seen the album among the albums on his computer when he was hunting for something else for her to listen to one day.

Chuck was singing along, aloud, seated in the chair in his room. His voice was clear and rich and it echoed all around in Sarah. She listened for a moment, eyes closed. Then the song ended. _Jerkin' Back and Forth_ started. Chuck rose. He began to jerk in rhythm with the song, again singing along, but this time, his voice had an edge to it, anger of his own.

And Sarah knew that he was thinking about her. In relation to both songs.

Chuck did not know about 'the Ice Queen', as far as Sarah knew, but he had been singing _Through Being Cool_ to her, not singing it as a declaration, as Devo sang it. He was not singing it as about her, as he heard the lyrics on the first date (about the violence of his flash scenes), but as a request: he wanted her to be through being cool.

And, well, _Jerkin' Back and Forth_ was self-explanatory - with two obvious senses. She felt herself warm and blush. She knew what he meant, all he meant. And then Chuck saw her. She wanted to duck, but that would have been odd. So she climbed through the Morgan Door. Chuck noticed a small shopping bag in her hand. To cover his self-consciousness, he pointed to it. "Pick something up for the trip. Maybe a present for Heather?"

Sarah scowled and growled. Out loud. Chuck stepped back. "Sorry."

"No, it's not you. It's her. Old story."

Chuck winced and put his hands up, taking a posture of surrender. "I'm not asking..."

He sounded tired and upset. A bit of the edge with which he'd been singing re-entered his voice.

 _Damn it. I don't want to start this mission in the wrong way. We haven't been alone together much since the fountain. And this mission will be hard enough for me as it is. I want you to know me, Chuck. Me, not a high school guidance counselor's file. "Gifted, unhappy girl. Unstable home life. Absentee parents." Not Graham's file. "Gifted unhappy killer. No home. Alone." But I don't know how to free myself from the files. The files do not contain lies. They just don't contain me. I am sure of that now._

Sarah said none of that. She handed Chuck the bag. He looked inside. She knew what he saw, of course: a framed picture to replace the one she speared with a pencil.

"I wanted to replace the one I...messed up." Sarah tried to soften her voice in response to the edge in Chuck's. She had brought the photograph in as an apology. She had planned to find a reason to show it to him if he had not noticed and asked.

Chuck looked at her, appraising her. As always, she could see him see her. Whole-sight. As always, It was like he knew her secrets but would not acknowledge it for fear that her knowing he knew would make her run, shut down, close up.

 _Could he have flashed on more and not told me? He knows I have killed, but...I think all those cases were flashes of self-defense. I hate that he even knows those, but on our missions, he has seen me do as much or be willing to do as much. He knows I am wired...the way I am wired. I can pull a trigger. God, I wish that weren't true. I wish I had Chuck's inability to imagine taking a life, his moral repugnance to the very idea. That I am wired that way...does that mean that there is something wrong with me, does it? He could help me with all this if I could just...speak._

Sarah came back to herself, back to herself in Chuck's room. He was still appraising her.

He gave her a gentle smile. "Well, I shouldn't have pushed you. The whole reporter-with-pencil-and-paper-and-peppering-questions routine was not as funny as I thought it would be."

And then he did something she did not expect. He stepped to her and reached for her hand, taking it in his.

Up until that moment, virtually all non-accidental physical contact between them had been initiated by her or invited, explicitly invited, by her. She dictated all demonstrations of affections. Even the kiss, the bomb kiss: _she_ kissed him. But _he_ took her hand. He recognized the apology. He was apologizing in turn. For the fountain. For throwing cold water on... _them._ She knew how unhappy and frustrated he was; she was his mirror image in that regard. But that simple gesture made it all worthwhile to her. To be touched by this man, this good man, this unique man, sweet and gentle and patient and heroic and strong, to be touched by _Chuck_ , in a word, it meant everything to her. His choice for real. She could feel how much longing was in that simple touch. She mirrored that too. And that feeling that she had with him - and had never known before, not with Bryce, certainly not with any man who had touched her before - suffused her: the most intense longing somehow containing and contained by the most settled belonging. _How does he make those possible together? Set me on fire and fill me with peace?_

Chuck smiled. "Give me a second. I need to grab some things in the bathroom. But I am packed. I assume Casey went on ahead on his own?" She nodded.

Chuck left the room and Sarah sat down on the bed. She looked at Chuck's suitcase. She was still anxious about this mission, about going back in time, as it were. But she would be going back with Chuck.

While they would not be visiting its darkest reaches, they were going for a walk in her graveyard. She had never had company there before. Never someone who might, on his own initiative, and sheerly out of love for her, take her hand as they walked.

She leaned back and relaxed on the bed, smiling a the ceiling. Devo was still playing: _Pity You._

Pity you  
You're telling me you've got a problem  
A nervous sort of contraction  
A mindless kind of reaction  
You never get no satisfaction

Sarah indulged in a snort of wry laughter. Somehow, Chuck always gave her life a soundtrack.

ooOoo

When they got to the reunion, Sarah scanned the table covered with name tags. Although one part of her hoped not to see it, another part of her desperately wanted to see it: _Gale's name_. When she did not see any _Gale_ , she was both encouraged and sadly disappointed. No one they might meet at the reunion - like Double D, who she saw staring at from across the gym ( _Bastard!_ ), with the same glassy-eyed self-satisfaction he had in high school - knew much of anything about her. She was letting Chuck in by being here ( _not that I have a choice, it is a mission - although it is not now provoking any anger-terror)_ , but she wanted to retain some control of the situation. She was neither sure she could control Gale nor that she could control herself around her. She had thought of her often over the years, always holding out hope that Gale was leading the life that Sarah hoped she...that Sarah hoped _Gale_ would lead.

The mission was moving along. They were trying to figure out who was handling Heather Chandler's nerdy, likable husband.

Sarah endured Chuck seeing a picture of her from high school. He had teased her gently about it, but there has also been a look of solidarity in his eyes, and of surprise. His tendency to glamorize her past took a severe hit when he saw that picture. It was not a picture of a cheerleader, of the prom queen, of the captain of the football team. It was the picture of a young woman, unpromising in look and uncomfortable in front of a camera, trying to force a smile for a stranger, a photographer. It was like the school pictures of countless awkward high school students, the ones who had lockers and desks but few friends and no standing in the school. Invisible. Sarah wondered if her skill at clandestine activities was partly the result of so many years of being invisible. But as Chuck looked at her, at the picture, back at her, she knew she was visible. She felt...real, solid, present. And she felt like maybe he had understood something about her, something that gave the lie to his assumptions about her. She felt as close to him then as she ever had.

Later, that feeling of closeness had been so strong that she allowed herself to do something she had never done. Walking across the gym floor while Chuck talked to Heather's husband, she and Chuck locked gazes, and she let herself smile at him - all of her, with all that she felt for him, named and nameless - she allowed it all to show for a moment. _Here I am._ She saw his eyes widen, then deepen with love. _Oh, Chuck, if only…_

But giving him that smile: It had been her answer to his taking of her hand before they left Burbank, her answer to so many...questions. She had not planned it. But she allowed it. She had no intention of walking it back, of taking it back. And for the first time since the fountain, she was sure that the break-up had not really happened. No doubt it was the prudent thing, the safe thing. But neither of them wanted it, despite the deep fears they both had, despite the suffering. _Yes, Chuck, the nerd got the girl._ The thing under the undercover thing is real, and it has a life of its own. I am going to let myself experience it.

ooOoo

Predictable mission craziness: Sarah ended up fighting Heather Chandler in the girls' showers. Somehow, she should have known that was coming. Heather was a spy, her husband's handler. Their marriage was fake, although the husband did not know it. Sarah should have been able to dispatch Heather easily, despite Heather's surprising ability to fight. _Bitch!_

But the fight was complicated. Sarah was distracted during it.

She was distracted by the past, by the feelings of inferiority that were still hers where Heather was concerned, and that Heather expected to be there and played on as they fought.

She was distracted by the sickening analogy between Heather's fake marriage and her own relationship with Chuck. The situations were different but maddeningly alike.

She was distracted by finding that she and Heather were now so much _alike_. _Had the CIA make-over made me into a bitch too?_ _What does it say that she and I are in the same line of work?_ That unexpected and unwelcome solidarity chilled Sarah as they fought in the cold water of the showers.

But what distracted Sarah the most was this: _she had not known this was coming_.

Her intuition should have alerted her. Heather was suspicious by definition. Still, Sarah had believed the marriage, had not questioned it for a second, had not thought for a moment that such a thing was, if not impossible, wildly improbable. She had _believed_ Heather was in love with her nerdy, good-guy husband. Believed Heather _loved_ her husband. And why would Sarah believe that so readily? Casual onlookers probably doubted it. She had seen doubt on the faces of her old classmates at the reunion when they saw Heather with her husband.

Sarah was a gifted spy. How could she not have seen that the love was fake? How could she have believed it was real? What would make her believe that? Believe in that marriage?

\- _Oh!_ Sarah fought back the thought. _No. No. Not going there._ She would not let herself have the thought, or the feelings.

She had to contend with Heather, had to end the external fight with her. She did, and she pushed the questions out of her mind. Or, she did for a while.

Casey had seen to the clean-up, gotten Heather into custody out of sight, and her husband taken in for further questioning. Sarah had gone to a bathroom and straightened herself up.

Strangely, although wet, she felt good about herself, about the mission, about the whole thing. She felt like she had washed some of high school out of her system, that some of the bad experiences there had somehow been released and faced and properly put behind her during that shower fight with Heather. Heather was the hated face of high school for Sarah, its embodiment. Taking her down was deeply, deeply satisfying. Sarah had faced new fears with Chuck at the fountain. She had faced old fears coming to the reunion and in the face-off with Heather.

Water and fear. Baptism, putting off the old, putting on the new, death and rebirth. Regeneration. Buried in waters to rise again. She did not pretend to understand such matters, but maybe…

She looked at herself in the mirror. No makeup, her hair still damp. For a split second, she saw herself with whole-sight, Chuck's gift. And for a split second, she saw...a human woman. A real woman. A woman with a sad past but who was beginning to imagine a happy future. She lost sight of her after a second, and she saw only herself in the mirror. But the split second of whole-sight stayed in her heart.

ooOoo

Chuck was waiting for Sarah when she got to the front of the building. They were just about to walk to her Porsche, to go to the hotel rooms they had waiting, when Sarah heard an excited shout.

"Jenny!"

Sarah turned to see Gale. She had come out of the building. She was carrying a baby. She had on old sweats, but she looked great. A little older but beautiful. Sarah's heart leaped in her. She had not realized how much she really wanted to see Gale. Gale had an oversized babybag on one shoulder.

"Gale!"

They met there on the sidewalk in front of the school, and Sarah hugged Gale and the baby together. She heard the baby giggle, and then she heard Gale sniffle.

"I can't believe it. Jenny. Jenny Burton. I did not know or you were alive or dead." _For a lot of years, I wondered too, Gale. But I'm now pretty sure I am alive._

"Well, here I am," Sarah said, extending her arms outward, presenting herself. "Alive and kicking."

Chuck tried, not entirely successfully, to stifle a laugh at the last phrase, no doubt thinking of Heather and the fight. But then Sarah heard that the song was playing, muted, from the gym, playing for the final few hardcore reunion attendees. Simple Minds _._ _Alive and Kicking._

Caught up in the moment, hearing the song, Sarah stepped back and gestured toward Chuck. "This is Chuck, my boyfriend."

It was out before she thought about it. Out, and _meant_. For the first time, she said that of Chuck and it was not tainted with a cover. He was her boyfriend.

 _Was that audible? Did Chuck hear the difference, the lack of taint?_

Sarah could not tell for sure. It was sort of like the 'Lisa'-moment. Sarah did not know if he heard the change in tone. But he had a pleased smile and he reached out and shook Gale's hand eagerly. "Good to meet you, Gale. Heard a lot about you." _Bless you, Chuck. You've heard nothing about her but you are making this easier for me. A normal girl would have told you about high school, about her dear best friend in high school. But here we are, at my high school, with my dear old best friend…._

"Say, _Jenny_ , I'm sure you two would like to catch up...and I could use some coffee after so much of that spiked punch. I saw a shop a block over," he pointed as he spoke, "I'll go get a cup and you two can catch up with me later." He ended it as a question. Sarah smiled and nodded.

She stepped to him and raised up on her toes. She kissed him lightly on the lips, not for the cover, but in genuine thanks. He walked away. Gale watched him go for a moment, then she turned to Sarah. Gail still looked like the dishevelled elf queen she had in school.

"He's _beautiful_ , Sarah. And the way he _looks_ at you, the way he looked when you were hugging me…" She smiled in pleasure. "Anyway, here I am too. I wasn't coming. Robert had to be away at work and I couldn't find a sitter for Jenny…" Gale paused after the name and Sarah felt her mouth fall open, "...but Bobby, I don't know if you remember her," Sarah shook her head, "yeah, we've gotten to be friends. She called after you arrived. I had to come if you were here. I got here a little while ago, but I couldn't find you, and I didn't want to go in looking like a _hausfrau_ and with a fussy baby," She looked down at the little one, "although she seems better now. But I saw you finally...And I saw you dance the Reunion Queen dance with him. I'm so happy for you."

Sarah did not know what to say. She was awash in emotions, in memory and hope.

Finally, she somehow managed to stammer-gush, "Yes, he is...beautiful." She realized she was now staring at Chuck as he walked away, in the distance, and she re-focused on Gale - and the baby. Then it hit her. "' _Jenny_ '?"

Gale looked at her, apparently surprised at her surprise. "When we found out she was going to be... _a she_...what else could we do but name her after our guardian angel - my best friend?"

Sarah felt an inward rush of joy and pleasure that she knew matched an outward blush. One of her many names had mattered. She had mattered. "Your guardian angel?"

"Robert - we're married now, five years - and I started dating at that dance he asked me to, right around the time you disappeared (don't worry, I won't ask, I remember that you have your secrets). We dated through high school and then while I was at UCSD and he was at San Diego State. I studied poetry and Robert was a scholarship football player. We got married a little while after college. I'm in grad school now, finishing my dissertation. Robert got hurt his junior year - knee - so he couldn't keep playing. But he's a grad assistant with the SDSU football team, with a real shot at moving up. He's going to be a great coach one day."

"That's all so great! But still, I don't see how that makes me anyone's guardian angel."

"We know you were the one that broke into Robert house that night, or we're pretty sure," Gail gave Sarah a mischievous look, "and we're pretty sure you _might_ have seen his diary. It wasn't quite replaced in his drawer as he put it there. And we suspect," the look grew even more mischievous, "you were the person who kept Heather away from the dance. It's what you were born to be, Jenny, a guardian angel. We hope the same for our little Jenny."

Sarah looked away, but not before she grinned shyly. Gale shoulder-bumped her, and the baby giggled again. Sarah bent down and looked into little Jenny's dark eyes. She wished the baby a happy life, tried to communicate that wish to her. She stood back up and blinked away tears. "God, Gale, it is _so_ good to see you…."

They stood and talked a couple of hours, taking turns holding the baby. It was a good reunion. The best.

ooOoo

Back in Burbank, Chuck came by with a burger. They were going to share it, half for him, half for her. He knew about pickles. How much she liked them. _Why do I love pickles and hate olives? I bet he wonders._

Sharing - it was messy but worth it.

Before they ate, encouraged by the reunion, by seeing Gale, by everything with Chuck, feeling good, just feeling good, Sarah braved it. Took herself in hand and faced herself. She told Chuck he could ask a question about her past. Whatever he wanted - she put no parameters on the question. No limits. For once, no limits, no covers, just her, braving openness. Sharing. Willing to share. No limits. Swimming in open water.

But Chuck surprised her. Which should have been no surprise. His mind and heart followed their own track. He looked at her, that strange whole-sight again. He saw her, past, present...and future. All of her. But without knowing _about_ her, without laying down requirements on who she had to be. He had hopes- they both did - but he would give her the space to become the woman she was becoming. She did not have to change on his agenda, according to his timetable. He was strong enough - again, he proved strong enough - to accept what she could give at the pace she could give it. And he told her so. He did not need to ask. He knew her. _Her_. Another gift from her gift.

She knew they would stumble, that he would have moments of impatience, that she would too. But that she did not know how a _them_ was possible did not prove it impossible. The limits of her imagination were not the limits of reality or possibility. _Thank God!_ And she was finding that her imagination was outstripping what she thought was possible for it. For her.

That part of her that was free was getting stronger still.

 _No, that's not quite right. Its getting stronger is its getting_ larger _. It is becoming more of me. More of me. Free. Free to share. Not everything, not right now. Not yet. But...more._

* * *

 **A/N2** There that wasn't so bad, eh? Even kinda good, right?

I've been waiting to write this chapter since the first chapter of the sequence. Cougars is a really interesting episode and only makes real sense thematically if it is taken up as a figure against the background of the fountain conversation. It is an answer of sorts to the questions of the fountain.

Cougars is also a light-handed homage to the _Buffy_ prom episode (itself a remarkable episode of television) and to the big reunion scene of _Grosse Point Blank_. I extended the homages a bit.

One thing that I believe it is easy to miss in _Chuck_ , again because of the understandable viewer identification with Chuck's POV (it is called ' _Chuck_ ' after all), is that Sarah goes through ups and downs that mirror Chuck's in number and intensity. I have focused mostly on the downs in the sequences because the sad truth is that we all mostly come to self-knowledge only through sadness and suffering. I love that the show, for all its sillinesses and ephemera, all its misses and meanderings, _gets that_ , that it was wise enough to present two people helping each other to wholeness and self-knowledge and not to deny how hard such journeys are. After all, those who have traveled the path before us (Socrates, anyone? Augustine, anyone? Pascal, anyone? Simone Weil, anyone?) have all told us it is so.

When I wrote the first chapter of this story, I knew I was plunging into cold, dark waters. As I write, I enter histrionically into the lives of my characters - I suppose most writers do. But that means that their suffering has to register with me or I cannot write it with any descriptive exactness or power. I know this has been hard to read. Melancholy, to use _RC1701's_ phrase. Please know it has been hard to write. And although I am proud of the story sequence, please also know that I am not sitting over my computer, rubbing my hands in maniacal glee, chuckling at the thought of making my readers squirm, making them melancholy. I am not. For me, every inkling is a little stab.

My immediate plan right now is to write a Jill sequence, _Double Agent;_ a sequence that telescopes Delorean, Santa Claus, and Cole Barker, _Pros, Cons and Commitment;_ a single chapter story, _Mission 564;_ and a sequence on Colonel and Ring, _Imperfect Execution._ That will finish S2.

There will not be many sequences for S3-S5. I will explain that and my plan for those seasons, later. Suffice it to say now that I take the key moments in Sarah's journey to occur in S1-S2. S3 is more about the effect of Chuck's journey on a changed Sarah. But as I said, I will explain later. I will include some of the happiest moments of S3-S5 in the sequences of course. And once we get to Honeymooners, the sun will be out for good, despite some partly cloudy days.


	30. Double Agent

**A/N1** We head now into what I think of as the _dating days_ of S2.

Despite the fountain, despite the cover dating complications, Sarah and Chuck are now embarked on their abnormal real couple's journey. In Cougars, Chuck gets to know something about Sarah's past. In the Jill arc, Sarah has to weather the storm of the returning ex (Chuck has done that twice, but Sarah's storm is importantly more severe). Soon, Chuck will meet Sarah's parents, er, parent. And then significant jewelry will be exchanged. After a bit, Sarah will meet the parent. Despite the fountain-doubts about their future, they continue to move together into futurity. Zigzagging madly, yes, but still moving, cumulatively, slowly forward.

Casey enters the story a bit more now. Ellie will soon. Wedding bells, remember?

Longish remarks in A/N2. Last of the long notes for a while. This chapter compresses the events of the Jill arc and then ends with three non-canon scenes.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER THIRTY

 _Double Agent_

* * *

Your boyish reassurance is not reassuring  
And I need it  
And all of my devotion turns violent  
If you go to her, don't expect to come home to me

I can't get you off my mind, I can't get you off in general  
So here we are, we're just two losers  
I want you and you want something more beautiful

Love me  
Love me!

-Japanese Breakfast, _Boyish_

* * *

Chuck slept with Jill. Chuck slept with Jill. Chuck slept with Jill...

Sarah could not make the thought stop. It was on _Repeat_ in her head. Chuck slept with Jill. Casey heckling her about it was not helping. He could be a son of a bitch sometimes. He knew it was killing her; he was perversely fascinated by her attempts to deny it. Maybe in his hard-edged way, he was trying to help. Trying to get her to tell herself the truth. The truth was that Jill was killing her. Oh, and that she wanted to kill Jill. Kill her so _completely_.

Maybe not kill Jill quite with the arctic, white-cold rage with which Sarah attacked Colt. This rage was less white... greener. Praying Mantis green. Poison oak green. Wasabi green. Viper green. All those, but especially _viper green_.

 _Serpent in the bosom._

Right line (Jill, serpent), bad image (bosom): Chuck slept with Jill. My boyfriend slept with his old girlfriend. And I... sort of….helped.

It was maddening. Maddening. Absolutely maddening. Confusing and enraging. She thought she and Chuck had found their way to a good place. True, neither of them had said that they were not broken up. But Sarah thought there was no need. They were cover dating. They had gone to her reunion. He had met Gale. And true, she had not told him any more about Gale after he met her, and he had not asked. He had also not asked anything about her past when she had offered; she would have answered any question, including a Gale question.

But it had not been her imagination. Since the reunion, things had been different. Better. They were more relaxed around each other. The cover dates were more fun than ever, felt more real.

 _More real_.

Perhaps that was the problem. Sarah still was uncomfortable with Chuck's stark _real/unreal_ dichotomy. She wanted her gradual _more real, less real, still less real_ continuum. She thought they were more real. That they were heading toward fully real. How they would get there she still did not know, but they were _moving along the continuum_ , gradually.

And her feelings, whatever she should call them, were fully real. Chuck's were too. But Chuck wanted the two of them to be real. A real couple. He accepted what she could give, but he wanted more, hoped for more, and given the dichotomy, from his point of view - overall - they were _unreal._ Not their feelings, but _them._ There was no _them_ there.

She was willing to admit, _had to admit_ , that that frustrated them both, but him more than her. She had lived on this continuum her whole life. Her dad put her there; Graham and the Company reinforced it. Her existential continuum. Sarah as Hamlet: "To sort of be and sort of not be." (Chuck: "To be or not to be.") What she had with Chuck was not what she wanted, but it was more real than any relationship of her life. Any, including her parents. It was not all she wanted, but it was more of what she wanted - more of what she needed - than she had ever found. More than she deserved. She was impatient for more, growing steadily more impatient, but if nothing else her whole life had taught her how to deny herself. How to make do with less.

And, at bottom, a source of trouble, for Chuck, was that Sarah did not have to be in this situation. She could leave, Bryce's visit showed it. She was here by choice. What she had with Chuck was the reason for the choice, but she had talked about the job so much that she had poisoned the well. Chuck still thought that her feelings were partly a product of professionalism. Her desire to protect him rooted in her job. He thought her feelings were feelings for _Intersected Chuck_ , not just Chuck, and she had begun to realize that some of Chuck's fears about the future were themselves caught in a paradox like the ones Sarah spent so much time in: in wanting to get rid of the Intersect, so that he could have a future with the woman he loved, he was going to cost himself a future with the woman he loved.

 _Shit._ Sarah did not care about the Intersect as Chuck thought, but she shared her version of that fear. If he did not have it, she would be reassigned. And then she would have to move off her continuum and into Chuck's dichotomy, embrace Chuck and the normal life he offered, or stay with the only life she had ever known. Could she do it, could she do it when the time came? She knew she wasn't ready yet. She needed more time. She had changes to make yet. Her new habits were developing, but they were still young and unsteady - she could not entirely trust them. Her old habits were yielding, but they were still powerful and sure - they trumped the new habits when she was not careful, when she was upset or pressured.

Chuck wanted her as she was, right now. But Sarah knew she still was not ready for normal yet. Her convalescence from abnormal to normal was long and slow; it was taking time. The slow cure. She had been abnormal for a long time. It would take time to get to normal. She was closer, closer than she had ever been. She was wording her past slowly. Facing some things. _Bryce. Carina. Heather Chandler. High School. Gale (and Robert). Still, miles to go, dammit. Still, slow and steady._

Sarah was getting better.

ooOoo

Then Chuck went on that damned install at the Bio-Tech Conference and he found _her_ there. Jill. And she found him. Of course, she immediately got pulled into one of their missions. Jill's boss was suspected of developing a bio-weapon. They needed to use Jill to get to her boss. Of course. That meant they needed to use Chuck to get to Jill to get to Jill's boss. They had to use Chuck. _I get to send Chuck, in effect, to seduce Jill._ _Shit. Shit._ At first, Sarah thought it might work out in the end, even be good, that maybe Jill's visit would allow Chuck to put his long dissatisfaction and nagging questions about her to bed. She did not expect him to take _Jill_ to bed. But it ended up that way.

It hurt, sickened her. Seasick pain all over. Her throat tight, her breathing strained. Her imagination returning to...images. She had her first full, bitter taste of what Bryce's visits must have been like for Chuck.

She should have seen it all coming, in retrospect. The fundamental asymmetry in her relationship with Chuck remained.

She knew how he felt - at least she had until Jill arrived. _I'm less sure now. God, how that hurts._ But Chuck did not _know_ how she felt.

He no longer thought her just pretending, he knew she cared about him. But she had never, ever said anything clarifying and direct. Instead, she gave him Sibylline Oracles, ambiguous pronouncements that never quite committed her, that her superiors or coworkers (cameras, bugs, eyes) could take one way and that she hoped Chuck took another:

"Not always."

"You can have anything you want."

 _Sibylline Oracles._

* * *

Chuck gave her that phrase. They had been at _Pressing and Grinding_ one night, continuing her musical education, sipping coffee and listening to an album Chuck had chosen, Richard Buckner _Devotion and Doubt._ The title of the record hit Sarah hard. It could have been Chuck's title for them, for his relationship to her. Chuck told her it was Buckner's album after divorce. He had her read some of the song lyrics as they listened. They were moving, heavy and sad, but it was hard to know exactly how to understand them. Chuck called them Sibylline, and when Sarah raised an eyebrow, he explained - oracular statements, ambiguous in meaning but suggestive of important or deep things. Sarah eyes locked with Chuck's. He looked at her before he looked down at the album cover in his hands.

She knew he took her to the Listening Rooms still hoping she might tell him something, that he might get to listen to her. To real, straight talk, not Sibylline Oracles. That she would, with just one clear statement, release him from doubt and leave him only in devotion. But that statement never came. She could not give it to him. Why not say it? " _I like you, Chuck. Not just like you, I like you a lot, you know?"_ Why not say it, just for the record, so that if she were killed on the next mission - always a possibility - she would not die, abandoning Chuck in devotion and doubt? She had no answer. She felt it, deep. But she could not put words to it and share it with him - bare-faced and frank.

Yes, things between them had been better since the reunion, more relaxed, but Chuck had not been released from doubt.

Then, Jill. It turned out she still had feelings for Chuck. And then events conspired against Sarah. _Because the universe hates me and I deserve it._ Chuck and Jill managed to save conference attendees exposed to a biohazard.

They did it while Sarah hunted down the assassin who killed Jill's boss. Sarah arrived back the Conference in time to see Chuck kiss Jill (he kissed her) in the midst of applause. Sarah did not feel like clapping. Chuck had already been willing to place Sarah in danger he was not willing to place Jill in. And although she knew there was a relevant difference between from Chuck's point of view - Sarah was a gifted spy, Jill just a gifted scientist, his willingness cut Sarah.

Still, that kiss. Watching it, she almost blubbered. But she could not, so she held (most of) the pain inside.

 _Chuck saw Bryce kiss me. How it must have hurt, because that kiss...that kiss stabbed me. He told Jill there was nothing between us, that I was just his cover girlfriend. Shit. How many times has Chuck heard me say or imply that about him? Did it hurt him this much? I knew it hurt him. God, Chuck, I am sorry._

Sarah decided that maybe it was for the best. Maybe Jill had been conjured back into Chuck's life by the conversation at the fountain - his chance for a real life, a real (not a cover) girlfriend. She owed him the chance. She had no official claim on him. _I don't deserve him._ But that did not make anything better. It made it worse. She had been hoping for so long. To have to try to reel that hope back in, to _unreal_ it, that was the worse bit of self-denial in her long life of self-denials.

At one point, Chuck told Sarah that being with Jill was great - because it was great to be with someone who knew the real him.

 _Damn it, Chuck!_ Did Chuck believe Sarah did not know the real him? How could he think that? Or was that a roundabout way of saying he did not know the real Sarah?

No, it would not be like Chuck to take back what he said to her over their shared burger after the reunion. So, what did that mean? Sarah had been trying to get better at Chuck. She had gotten better at Chuck. She was getting better.

But she still could not give him what he most needed. Her. Unwrapped and undone, naked in every way, his. And, although Chuck understood some of the reasons she might have for continuing to withhold herself, she never explained them to him, and he could sense that she was withholding herself still. He understood that there was a reticence in her that was _hers_ \- beyond the formal problems, handler/asset, cameras, bugs, eyes _._ An unclarity about herself. A conflict. Fear. An unwillingness of some kind that was not merely professional or the result of professional factors.

It did not help that Sarah seemed unwilling to fight for him. Unwilling to resist Jill's re-entry into his life. _His re-entry into Jill._ That his interest in Jill seemed to have her blessing. But how could she tell him it was not okay? _It is not fucking okay. It is so not-good. It has my curse, not my blessing._

Sarah knew Beckman was increasingly suspicions that Sarah was compromised. The missions' objectives dictated that Chuck should be with Jill. Beckman would worry about what that togetherness might mean in the future at a later date. Right now, the Fulcrum threat needed to be handled. If it worked out to Beckman's advantage for Chuck and Jill to...rekindle...then she was happy to let it happen. But Sarah doubted she would let it continue, once Jill was no longer mission-useful. So, Sarah had to let it happen, had to act like it was okay. Had to keep her suspicions about Beckman's long-term agenda to herself. Had to try to make Chuck believe it was all okay ( _That was not as hard as it should be, damn it, because he's so lost in rosy romantic nostalgia_ ).

Sarah was the instrument of her own destruction. Assassin of her own hopes. Enforcer of jealousy and sadness.

ooOoo

Watching Chuck puzzle-solve in the opera house with Jill was almost as bad for Sarah as his sleeping with her later. Seeing them connect that way, their meeting of minds, was brutal.

Sarah had not known that kind of connection with Chuck, because she was always of two-minds around him, and one of the minds was worrying about covering the other. But Sarah also recalled, as she watched, her own tandem fighting with Bryce in the Buy More. The synergy they had as fighters, a certain physical synergy. Chuck had seen it, surely. Now she got to see his different synergy with Jill, a certain mental synergy. That was part of what Chuck meant about Jill knowing the real him. He could enjoy, in the past had enjoyed, a meeting of minds with Jill. She could know Chuck's mind because she was sharing hers with him. That was not open to Sarah. Chuck's comment had not been focused on that, but that was the ultimate source of the problem. Sharing. She was not so good at it. She was trying. Baby steps: little steps for little feet.

But then he slept with Jill. Chuck slept with Jill. Slept with her.

He then went off-grid with her. And it turned out she was Fulcrum.

 _Of course! Bitch!_

She and Casey got to Chuck, found him. When they did, after Casey had thrown Chuck onto a massage table, Sarah finally said the words she really wanted to say, even if they too were Sibylline.

"Never do that again!"

She did not mean going off the grid, taking off his tracking watch (as he had). That was what she hoped Casey heard. No, she meant... _that._ Sleeping with Jill. Sleeping with anyone but Sarah. Ever. Her own vehemence surprised her. She meant what she meant.

"Never do that again!"

Sarah had not forgiven Chuck. The hurt was real, despite all the cover complications, and it would take time to get over it.

But comparing her situation in relation to Jill, to Chuck's in relation to Bryce, did make her sympathy for Chuck's predicament more real, less feigned. From his point of view, his past and his present had collided and, unlike Sarah, Chuck wanted to escape from his present, from his muzzled freedom. Neither of them had chosen their lives, really; but Chuck's seemed forced on him, more than Sarah's seemed forced on her. He did not know hers had been forced on her.

Her conscription was old news and Chuck was ignorant of it. She had lived as a conscript for so long she was finding imagining a life of freedom difficult. _You can get used to anything, I guess. Habituated to living in between, between freedom and bondage, between not happy and unhappy, between good and evil, between real and unreal._ Chuck had not been habituated like her. There had been no con years with Dad or spy years with Graham. His years with Ellie, while hard, Ellie had made into good years. Chuck had lived real, good, happy, free.

His disappointments at Stanford (school, Jill, Bryce) had taken a toll on him, demoralized him, made him so afraid of losing again that he refused to compete, that he hid in the Oz, in the Emerald City green of the Buy More - hid with the Munchkins (Morgan) and the scary bellhop monkeys (Lester, Jeff). But none of that had habituated him into anything like Sarah's habits.

Sarah had chosen to stay in Burbank when Bryce offered her an escape because she did not want the life he offered; she wanted the life that Chuck offered: the life she hoped for and did not know how to find over the life she hated but did not know how to lose. She thought again about the words Chuck had said to her in the Orange Orange (about Jill). "It's like I have my old life back." He had been forced into a choice like hers, but there were attractions in his old life that there were not in hers. He had good memories, lots of them. She had few. He had been given a choice between the old and the new and he had chosen the new.

He slept with Jill.

Thinking of the Buy More green made her frustrated and hurt again. _I am so jealous._ He had treated her as she had sometimes treated him, decided to treat what they as merely a cover when that was convenient, easier, when Jill came on the scene and let him know she was interested. He believed he wanted Jill. But he turned from that fast enough when he realized she was a spy, was Fulcrum.

In fact, he recovered faster than Sarah realized. What she thought was continuing attraction even after Jill's exposure, just ended up being Chuck's kindheartedness. Jill had a chance to escape and Chuck was going to let her.

But he did not. Unbeknownst to Sarah, Jill had a chance to shoot or to kill Sarah as Sarah searched for the Buy More for her. She did not manage it, but Chuck witnessed her intent, and what he witnessed overcame his kindheartedness. He tricked Jill. He locked her in a Nerd Herder and sent her to jail. Sarah heard him tell her that he would have let her escape if she had not been willing to hurt Sarah. To hurt Sarah.

Chuck chose her. Not Jill. Maybe he had never really chosen Jill - even if he really had...done other things.

ooOoo

Chuck had been so angry with Jill that he left Castle and went back up into the Buy More.

Casey saw him go and shot Sarah a questioning glance. She gestured with her head for him to follow Chuck. At first, Casey looked puzzled, but then he glanced back toward the holding cell and nodded. One corner of his mouth might have risen just a millimeter.

After he left, Sarah walked down the hallway. Jill saw her approach the cell and stood up. The two women stood staring silently at each other through the glass. As with Heather Chandler, Sarah found herself alike someone she did not like. The glass seemed almost a mirror, despite the difference of appearance between the two women.

"So," Sarah said after a long moment of indecision about what to say, "you're a spy after all. You were never Chuck's real girlfriend, were you?"

Jill had not expected that. Her stare shifted in quality, softened a bit, almost hurt, a bit sad. "I was his real girlfriend, for a while."

"But you never loved him?" Sarah asked

"Loved him? I did, sure. Not enough." Jill's stare hardened again. "He would have let me escape if it weren't for you."

Sarah did not reply. Her stare spoke loudly.

After a few moments, Jill: "Can I tell you something? Not for your sake, _believe me_ , but his?" Sarah nodded once, knowing she was taking a risk talking to Jill at all, but especially letting Jill talk impromptu. There, in Castle. Under Surveillance. But she needed to talk to Jill or to hear Jill talk. She needed to.

"Chuck is in love with _you_." When Sarah started to deny, Jill went on with more determination, anger. "He forgot that for a minute. But I know it when I see it. I wrapped him in old warm feelings," Jill gave a slight, lascivious grin and Sarah thought of her knives, "and employed some...Fulcrum-style seduction. Though I won't say my motives were purely...Fulcrum. It turns out his...situation...with you…" Jill paused, staring intently at Sarah, then gestured past Sarah, vaguely at Castle, "with all of this...made my job easier. I don't understand it all. But you've people have caged him. Used him. Dehumanized him…"

But Jill's anger slumped after a moment. Sarah thought she felt the sting of her own words. "But my hold on him would not have lasted long. It was a spell, and that's how magic works: it is impermanent." Pause.

"You ever read Thoreau, Agent Walker?"

Surprised, Sarah shook her head. In thinking about Jill the spy, she had forgotten Jill the nerd, the Stanford honor student.

Jill gathered herself, her anger returning. "Well, he talks a 'Realometer', a device for gauging reality. The reality beneath shams and appearances. Chuck has one. Sometimes he forgets to use it or gets tricked out of using it, but he eventually remembers. He'd have seen through me. My hope was to get done...what I needed to get done...before that happened." Jill bit her lip. "What he thought he felt for me, could have with me, was a sham bodied out by the memory of a lie - but also aided by the...difficulty of his present situation.

"Look, here's what I mean to say, Agent Walker. I know how hard it is to be around that guy and not feel things. Maybe you feel nothing. If you feel nothing, you are a better spy than me. Genuinely heartless. Congrats on that. _But be fair to him_. I wasn't, haven't been. The government won't be. That brute, Casey, won't be. I suspect you haven't been. Decide what is real and what is not, Agent Walker, in his life and in yours. Find your Realometer. He deserves that much from you." Jill returned to the chair in the room and sat down, crossing her arms and resting them on her knees. She evidently had said her piece.

ooOoo

Sarah was still seasick green, still having trouble keeping certain images out of her imagination, still disappointed, gutshot, by what Chuck had done. But the conversation with Jill was ricocheting around in her head.

Chuck began to apologize as they headed to Thanksgiving dinner. He took her hand and she took his. She could see, could feel that he was sorry. She had no official claim on him. She was not his real girlfriend. She had nothing to accuse him of that she was not guilty of herself, or that she had not had a hand in creating.

 _Goddamn job. Goddamn missions. No one prepares you for this. Sending your boyfriend to seduce his old girlfriend when you know he has no training in that, when you know he is officially government property...when you know...when you know all I knew. When I put up no fight, helped him to do it, because I could not let anyone know that I am compromised._

That was Chuck's one advantage when Bryce was in town. He did not have to pretend to be okay with Bryce in the way she did with Jill. (He did, a bit, but he really did not have to.) She _had_ to watch Chuck and Jill kissing, beginning to have sex, and she had to pretend for Casey's sake (or anyone else who might have checked Castle's surveillance feed) that she was okay with that. _I had to watch that and be okay with that. The universe hates me and I deserve it. What goes around comes around, but with a chaser of forced inexpressiveness._

 _Forced inexpressiveness. I have been inexpressive so long I worry that if I really get a chance to express anything real, I will not be able to do it. Mute. A statue. I will be trapped behind this stony face forever. What did mom tell me when I was really little and made faces? "Careful, if the wind changes, you'll stick like that!" Maybe the wind had changed. Maybe she would stay stony-faced forever._

ooOoo

Chuck followed Sarah out of the apartment. Thanksgiving festivities had ended. Sarah was feeling better. When they got outside, Chuck stopped her. He started to gesture to the fountain, to suggest that they sit, when he caught himself. The earlier conversation there had polluted the waters, at least temporarily. Maybe they would sit there again - but not tonight.

He seemed to make a decision. He walked her carefully a little further from the door, then stopped her. "Here." He whispered. She gave him a curious look. He explained. "This is a dead spot in the surveillance. I got a chance one day to look over Casey's shoulder. This little slice of the courtyard, it is about all of my home that belongs to me." He kept his voice low, soft, but Sarah winced.

"No, no, Sarah, I am not complaining, or not exactly. Anyway, I don't blame you. I just want to say what I said earlier, but not phrased for the cameras. Sarah," he looked her in the eyes and still kept his voice low, but it rose in intensity, "I need to tell you I am sorry again. What I said earlier was true, and I meant it, but it just didn't cut it.

"Look, I know we are...or were...somewhere...in between, that our cover dating was really covering something...and I am...was...am...happy about that, or I could accept it. But I don't know where _in-between_ is, Sarah. I don't know what the _something_ is under the cover.

"And, before you react," he put his hands out, imploring her, "keep in mind I am not asking that you tell me. I hope one day you will...can. That one day we can say," his eyes flicked to her lips and Sarah successfully stifled an on-rushing sigh of longing, "or _show_...each other how we really feel." He smiled tightly thinking of Longshore, and she reached out and they joined hands as they had at the extraction point that night.

His smile loosened and grew. "I know what I...did with Jill hurt you. I've been thinking...I forget sometimes that you are under surveillance too. I don't understand the rules, still...but I get that handlers can't be involved with assets. You told me when we thought Graham was creating more Intersects...that they would reassign you somewhere as far from here as possible. And as much as it depressed me to think about, I did think about it, and I thought about why: _no ties_. Diminish the chance that you might return…Since you told me that, _we've_ seemed even more fragile to me...the future...the present is so hard...and there's no way of knowing about the future."

Sarah started to speak, but Chuck squeezed her hands and went on. "I know you can't say anything. Even off the record. My not-knowing is probably the only way we can have anything that's real." He shook his head in bitter self-amusement. "I can know if we are _unreal_. I cannot know if we are real. Because, if I did, I would...flood your phone with text messages…" they both laughed, "and beam so bright that Beckman would see it from DC. You can't... _I believe_ you can't quite _pretend_ to date me. Maybe I can't _pretend_ that I am not dating you. Maybe. Surely." Sarah sighed softly then and his smile became a grin.

His gaze turned inward, and he laughed. "God, I'm not sure that made any sense."

He closed his eyes for a minute and took a breath. "And it wasn't an apology. But it wasn't an excuse either. Just an...explanation. Of my loss of faith...in you...in us...in a future.

"Jill...she is my past. Maybe you can't be my future. Maybe this will never work out. But I am going to keep the faith from now on, Sarah, if you can...if you need...to forgive me, I hope you can. I'm asking you to. The possibility of something...with you...What's that phrase? I have been mentioning 'faith', and the phrase is related, I heard it in my religion course freshman year...Oh, yeah, this phrase: _I believe, Sarah; help my unbelief._ " Chuck dropped his head in embarrassment, in genuine supplication.

Sarah brushed tears from her eyes as she had at the fountain after their earlier conversation, managing to do it before Chuck saw just how moved she was, although he raised his head enough to know that his remarks had touched her. She put her hands back together with his.

"Chuck…I..."

"It's okay. Really, it is. I just wanted you to know that I am sorry. I'm an idiot."

She managed a gentle smile over her surging emotions. "So, Chuck, ' _I believe, help my unbelief'_? I thought _I_ was the Sibylline Oracle."

Chuck chuckled. "The Oracles of God, Sarah. Or the gods. Anyway, we are probably going to need divine intervention…."

 _You have no idea, Chuck. The universe hates me and I deserve it._

Chuck gave her an odd look; he had seen some shift in her eyes, her posture.

"What, Chuck?"

He took a moment, then spoke. "You deserve to be happy, Sarah. Maybe I am not the man to make you happy. Maybe we won't ever get to find out...If not, that will make me unhappy. But I want you to be happy, and if you are happy, I can cope...with, you know, whatever...

"You absolutely deserve it. And I apologize again...if I made you...for making you...if I made you ...unhappy."

He dropped one hand but kept the other, and turned, walking with her hand-in-hand in the dark. Sarah felt no need to whistle. She had had a glimpse of herself as a human woman in the mirror, after her fight with Heather Chandler. What happened with Jill hurt and it would take time to get over it, but it gave Sarah a glimpse of Chuck as a human man.

 _My human guy, after all, after it all._

* * *

 **NSA Secure Email**

 **From:** Major John Casey

 **To:** General Beckman

 **Re:** Agent Sarah Walker

I am writing directly in response to your question, "Is Agent Walker compromised?" We have spoken of this before. My answer remains no.

The Intersect has romantic feelings for Walker, as you and I have discussed a number of times.

That complicates things in one way, uncomplicates them in another. It makes him harder to control on-mission, easier off-mission. As you know, the Intersect is willing to risk his life for Walker's sake. He had done so on numerous missions. But to be fair, he is willing to risk it for mine too, and no one is asking if I am compromised. He seeks Walker out when they are not on-mission, wants to spend time with her. She normally agrees. Is all that time devoted to cover maintenance? Yes and no. It does maintain the cover. (Ellie Bartowski and her husband-to-be clearly like Walker, and Walker spends time with the entire family.) Is maintaining the cover the sole purpose of that time? No, but that does not mean the time is inappropriate or wasted.

Does Agent Walker like the Intersect? Yes. She and he are friends. I heard her tell him so during the Jill Roberts mission. But Agent Walker handled herself professionally throughout.

I believe the friendship between Walker and the Intersect is a lucky break, not a problem.

The Intersect is no spy, but he is no asset either. (That is not a criticism of him. Between us, General, the intelligence community needs more categories.) This team only works if the Intersect works. And he only works because Walker is with him because she is his friend. This team is strong but it has a delicate balance. The Intersect is a good man. He leads with his heart, not the Intersect program in his head. Agent Walker keeps him focused, works on his heart. I work on his head. Between us, we have kept him focused and working, and reasonably happy, and the team's results speak for themselves.

As long as this team centers on the Intersect, it will never be a fully 'professional' team. With all due respect, General, I believe you have to accept that. Bartowski has romantic feelings for Walker. He likes me. I think he likes you too, by the way. If that occasionally makes the team seem more like _F Troop_ than _Force 10 From Navarone_ , that is just the cost of working with Bartowski. But the results are more than worth the cost.

Bartowski is a human being with a computer in his head. He is not a computer disguised as a human being. Agent Walker keeps the human being going. I do not believe anyone else could do the job as well. She does it, not by seduction or manipulation, but by maintaining, within professional limits, a personal relationship with Bartowski.

I judge there is nothing to worry about.

Major John Casey

 **End of Secure Transmission**

* * *

After leaving Chuck's, Sarah stopped by Castle. She was not likely to sleep soon after that conversation, after all, that had happened with Jill. She thought she would do some paperwork, calm her mind with mindless shuffling.

She had not expected Casey to be there, typing at one of the computers. He saw her and she realized she had not composed her face. Her emotions were on it. She blanked her expression. _I guess my face did not stick that way. Now it gives me away._ He gave her a long look and she thought she saw a flicker of sympathy in it just before he looked away, that he intended her to see it. Then he hit a key on the keyboard with considerable force. He stood up and turned off the computer.

"See you, Walker."

* * *

 **A/N2** And there it is. Tune in next time for Chapter 31, "Pros, Cons, and Commitment".

A couple of thoughts on the Jill arc and the show more generally.

One, the Jill arc gets drawn out at such length on the show because it is the kind of thing that sells, and, let's face it, the show did plenty of pandering in its attempts to bolster its numbers. But, setting that external point aside, internally it took so much time because the show, taking Chuck's POV as it does, and having built up Jill as it had (fairly steadily since the pilot), the show had to tell a story that justified all the build up. (Comparable to how much Wookiee mattered to me here, given my pre-Burbank stories.) But, since we are taking Sarah's POV, I think it is neither Jill herself nor her status as a double agent that most matters to Sarah. It is Chuck's felt betrayal of the _them_ that he and Sarah are and aren't. That is accordingly my focus in this shorter treatment of the Jill arc. My chapter title is a ploy: meant to suggest that Jill or her betrayal is Sarah's focus, but instead underlines the parallels between the Jill visit for Sarah and the Bryce visit for Chuck. Jill and Bryce are the double(d) agents. Oh, and Sarah is too, in a different, complicated sense. Agent Walker is steadily becoming Sarah's cover, Sarah Walker her real identity.

Two, the show worked with a mathematical exactness through romantic competitors: for Jill, Bryce; for Lou, Cole; for Hannah, Shaw. And the competitors are presented at the same level of seriousness as competition, and as provoking similar reactions from Chuck or Sarah (whether as participant or onlooker). Given that, it is really amazing how asymmetrical fan reaction is to the members of the pairs, particularly those on Sarah's side. I've been harping on part of the explanation: we see the women who enter Chuck's life from his POV _and_ we see the men who enter Sarah's from Chuck's POV too. But if we are more even-handed, if we really try to imagine Sarah's POV, then things look interestingly different. The asymmetries get corrected. After all, if Sarah's is rightly accused of having wandering affections, then Chuck must be so accused. His lips do a lot of wandering in the show. If we are really about Chuck and Sarah, we should find Lou as troubling as Cole _mutatis mutandis._ In fact, we should _ditto_ our way through the competitors, seeing them in relation to their mathematical 'other'.

One thing important to remember is that the show has a complicated structure, particularly in relation to Sarah. The first two seasons, she is mostly portrayed in ways that leave the audience guessing about her affections much as Chuck is guessing about them. The audience does get some glimpses Chuck does not: her final reaction to Bryce's kiss, her responses to Carina's goading about Snoresville, her 'Lisa' confession (a complicated case that I am playing off of in the non-canon scene between Chuck and Sarah of this chapter), her question to Casey about wanting a normal life. None of those glimpses is an adamantine proof at the moment of how she feels, but they are quite suggestive, particularly as they pile up. They help the audience keep the faith even where Chuck seems to lose it. But more importantly, they are meant to be read right to left, future to past, and not just left to right, past to future. Here's what I mean: unlike most shows, where of course the ending presupposes the beginning (trivially) and nothing more, _Chuck's_ beginning presupposes its later stages, particularly the late stages of S3. (In a too-simple slogan, the show's beginning presupposes its end.)

This matters so much for Sarah's character, for understanding her.

When Sarah tells Chuck that she fell in love with him almost at the very beginning, those earlier glimpses then get final disambiguation, as do her surrounding actions, and we are invited to re-read Sarah from the beginning, reimagining the show from her POV.

When we do, we find another drama hidden beneath the obvious, surface drama, something real under the cover, there was there all along, and we realize that Sarah's faced as much difficulty and heartache in those early two seasons as did Chuck. But seeing this requires accepting the need to read right to left, future to past. It requires re-considering all our first-viewing judgments of her.

That can seem like rubbing the fur the wrong way, but I firmly believe the show is bi-directional, and that its bi-directionality is one of its deepest achievements. (How much of this was deliberate, planned, how much later opportunism or good luck? Don't know. Don't care. But the bi-directionality is undeniably there.)

Once you see this, you understand that the show masquerades as a standard _WT/WT?_ , but was really a _They Already Have; but Will They Realize It?_ (where there is a crucial pun on 'realize': it means both "Will they understand it?" and "Will they make it real?".) That doesn't necessarily make it easier to take; maybe it makes it harder. But descriptive accuracy is a good thing.

This entire story sequence reads the show right to left, future to past. Kierkegaard was right: we remember backward but must live forward. But we can watch backward. (Especially with streaming services.)


	31. Pros, Cons, Commitment

**A/N1** A long chapter, experimental in form - at least in comparison to those preceding it. Three short chapters, or 'Cantos', as I will call them, since all veer farther toward prose-poetry than my normal stuff, and since the second is all-but a prose poem.

We are building toward a dam-break for Sarah. Although I have written her with more self-awareness than fans often grant her, bear in mind that her self-awareness is contradictory and conflicted. The most important things she knows, she also refuses to know.

Certain words have not yet been permitted into her conscious thinking; she keeps prohibiting one in particular. Her worries about inexpressiveness are right worries. Not because, as she is tempted to think, she is stuck in inexpressiveness, but because everything, her history, her habits, her difficulty wording her emotional life, her current situation under surveillance, Chuck's difficulty managing lies, - it all pushes her into an almost constant inexpressiveness. As usual with Sarah, she only gains full understanding in extremity, when she is forced to it.

The pace of the story-telling has sped up. I have deliberately pushed the missions further and further into the background, foregrounding Sarah's inner life more and more. That reflects a steady change in Sarah - in her phenomenology, the structure of her lived experience.

From the time she gets to Burbank, although she remains the gifted agent she has been, her focus shifts more and more to Chuck, to the problem of _them._ Missions are no longer the primary structuring feature of her life. The job becomes more a problem to be overcome than her focal point. She attends to it and does it well, but more and more for personal reasons, not out of professional ones, not in service to her old ideal of professionalism.

As I said, Sarah is now more Sarah Walker than Agent Walker, more about Chuck and his family than she is the Company. She about to become aware of that and of the changes in her as S2 draws to a close. S3 only makes the sense it does (more on that massive snarl later) if we understand Sarah as changed and as aware of it. She emerges from one end of the spy life just as Chuck enters from the other.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

 _CANTOS_

 _Pros, Cons and Commitment_

* * *

CANTO 1: Pro(fessional)s: Father and Daughter

* * *

And now my fur has turned to skin  
And I've been quickly ushered in  
To a world that I confess I do not know  
But I still dream of running careless through the snow  
And through the howlin' winds that blow  
Across the ancient distant flow  
And fill our bodies up like water till we know

But you can wear your fur  
Like the river on fire  
But you better be sure  
If your makin' God a liar  
I'm a rattlesnake, babe  
I'm like fuel on a fire

So if you're gonna' get made  
Don't be afraid of what you've learned

\- Blitzen Trapper, _Furr_

* * *

The truth was that Sarah loved her dad. She could not help it and did not want to, not really.

She hated him a little too.

With good reason. He had formed her. He had done it in a twisted environment. He had twisted her. She realized it eventually, but like one of Casey's Bonsai trees, she had grown twisted, according to her father's wishes, his trimming and cutting, and wiring, and her father had no sense that he was twisting her. He thought he was teaching her how to get on in the world, how to get ahead. Play the angles. See the world like a wild thing, not like the domestic livestock that lived in houses. He did not think he was teaching her _wrong._ Oh, he knew that other people would think so, but he thought they were the twisted ones, the nine-to-fivers, the family-values schmucks, afraid to challenge mere convention, afraid to live off their wits. Livestock. He knew they would live like him if they had his skill set, if they had his nerves. Out in the howling wind. Living an adventure, instead of a drowse of overstuffed Lazy Boys, lukewarm light beer and pudgy spouses. Tame and yawning.

Looking back, Sarah realized that her father had recognized her gifts: an extraordinarily agile mind, an improvisatory gift, an ability to suss out intention and motive in others, and to fake them herself. He took her gifts to school. The wrong school, but still he recognized them, celebrated them. He taught her by precept and example. He was the one who first distanced her feelings from her face, who taught her how to feel one thing while expressing another or while expressing nothing at all.

He rewarded her for bald-faced lies. He scolded her for revelatory moments. It was all backward and crooked, the way up was the way down - like he'd given her a box of Crayons, but only after systematically switching out the wrappers with the color names, so that she would get them all wrong. She knew and did not know. He cultivated that strange bifurcation in her nature. Bifurcation.

Worst of all, he taught her that trust was a weakness, a failing, an evasion of reality. Human life was a raw deal, a sport, nasty and brutish. And it was all a con, top to bottom, side to side, front to back, nothing was genuine, nothing trustworthy. _No one_. Especially that no one was trustworthy.

Life was a zero-sum confidence game of all against all. He hated gullibility, credulousness, faith. He pushed her to be ahead of the game, plotting all the time, checking and rechecking her angles. He was the one who first taught her to prepare, to make lists, not to trust to luck, even though he was prone to that form of trust himself. (He never seemed to notice the contradiction and the irony, and Sarah did not notice it in him until she was older.)

But he did love her. Her dad loved her. He believed he was giving her an education in real life. Not the education got from books - the education that mattered. Practical, not pie-in-the-sky. Bread and butter. Cash and carry. Smash and grab.

He was smart, lightening-quick and deeply charming. Adventuring with him was all life could be, could be imagined to be for her when she was young, when they started. It all went sour, but it started sweet, the two of them, careening and swashbuckling through small towns, scamming hicks, howling with contemptuous laughter as they rolled away from Middletown, USA.

Sarah was ashamed of it all now, deeply ashamed. What shamed her most was not that her father was a con man, or that she had joined in when young, but that she had gone on with it even after she knew it was wrong. Her love of her dad, her desire to keep having adventures with him, they had shouted down the voice her newly awakened conscience.

That set a dangerous precedent, and it grew worse. She taught herself to find strategies to avoid listening to herself, to avoid knowledge of her own reactions and emotions, to avoid owning her own experiences. She refused to apply her brilliant mind to her darkened self. She developed a convoluted strategy, assigning the experiences to the made-up girls she became on the cons. She did not con in her own name; she conned under an assumed name, an alias, even if she never used one or chose the alternative name. She learned to put on and take off those temporary identities and to convince herself that when she took them off, the misdeeds went with them. Alienated from her along with the alias.

Her father marveled at her chameleon-like qualities, but never saw how deep, how intensely personal, it all was. A zero-sum confidence game, not of all against all, but of Sarah against Sarah. Unlike her, he was little troubled by the voice of conscience, so he never imagined the radical lengths to which she had gone to keep from hearing hers.

Unlike her dad, as she got older, when they rolled into small towns, she no longer saw family-values schmucks.

She saw families.

People working to build lives for themselves and the people they loved.

People who trusted each other.

People who had an address. Rooms of their own. Friends.

She was not naive. She did not think the lives behind the house doors were always rosy, sitcom happy. She and her dad could hardly have kept alive if that were true. But she knew that there were people trying, people succeeding, sometimes against debilitating odds. That knowledge weighed on her.

ooOoo

There were people like Ellie Bartowski. She had raised her younger brother somehow, fed him and clothed him, taught him to be thoroughly decent, and then managed to get him through high school and on to a scholarship at Stanford. She did all that while getting an education herself, proving to be a remarkable student in her own right. Ellie Bartowski was a surd element in her father's conworld, proof that her dad's calculations were crucially in error.

Sarah had been thinking about her dad and about Ellie together because Ellie asked her about her parents. Chuck had stepped out to get some wine for dinner. Ellie had everything in the oven, so she had some time. She walked into the living room, checking the clock both to remind herself when the chicken would be done, and to see how long it would be until Devon's shift ended. Ellie put her potholders down on the arm of the couch and sat down beside Sarah.

"Sarah, we've told you some about our family, Chuck and I, or our non-family, but you've not told me much about yours. I was just thinking about Mom; the recipe I am using tonight is one she taught me, maybe the first one she taught me. I was wondering if you cooked, if your mom taught you?"

Sarah felt the familiar tightness in her chest whenever anyone asked about her parents. "Um...yes...I cook. A little. I'm good with eggs. I mean omelets. And you know I can burn weiners on a stick. Serve yogurt." Sarah laughed, hoping to redirect the conversation into other areas. Ellie made her slightly nervous almost all the time, but more than slightly when the conversation became personal. And conversations with Ellie often did. The Bartowskis could both babble on occasion, but neither was much with small talk. Sarah cast her gaze around the room, hoping to see something new, some other topic for conversation. But the only thing new was the old potholders, and they seemed new only because they were in the wrong place. And they would just keep the conversation moving in its current direction.

Ellie went on; Sarah could not stop her. "Right. I know you've done food service. But just for yourself. Have you ever cooked for Chuck? Maybe some family recipe?"

Sarah got stuck on the first question, musing. "No, I have never cooked for Chuck...other than at the Wienerlicious. Oh, and that dessert he...destroyed."

Ellie's mouth made an 'O'. She had forgotten. She shook her head at the memory.

Sarah smiled at Ellie's expression. Maybe Sarah could escape. "I would like to do that...but his work, my work, my apartment has no kitchen. My apartment is a place where I live but it is not a...domicile. It's green but not domestic. Which reminds me…"

No dice. Ellie went right on. "So, did your mom teach you any recipes?"

Sarah put her hands on her lap deliberately. Composing herself. "No, I don't really...Ellie, it's complicated."

She saw Ellie blink in consternation at that word. But then Ellie blinked again, blinked the consternation away. Sarah felt awful. She was always lying to these people, people she cared about. People who trusted her.

"My family stuff...it's a painful topic."

Ellie slid along the couch to Sarah and grabbed one of her hands. "I'm sorry. I understand that. You know I do. I shouldn't stomp around in other people's lives. It sometimes makes me crazy when people do it to me. I just...I just know my brother...I just would like to know you better."

"I'd like that too, Ellie. I'm just not much of a talker. When little I was never encouraged to talk much."

Ellie squeezed her hand. "Oh, Sarah, I'm sorry… _Be seen not heard_?"

Sarah thought Ellie likely had the wrong idea. "Yes, something like that."

 _Dad taught me that speaking in person was always a bad idea. No matter what you say, how carefully you choose your words, you give something away. Take, not give. Take. Talk in character, inside the con. Never from your heart. Never just speak. Never, ever. Keep a distance between your heart and your lips. Never let anything move freely in one direction or the other. "You'll be surprised how easy things come, how easy they are to say, when you disconnect your heart and your lips, Darlin'." He had been right. And wrong._

Ellie relented. She gave Sarah's hand a final squeeze. "Sorry again, Sarah." _Ellie, you didn't do anything wrong. I am wrong. I am getting better but it is taking so long. So long._

Ellie gathered up the potholders and stood up. She gazed kindly down at Sarah. "Being a parent is hard. But being a kid, that's hard too. And no one writes books about that."

 _Or about being a kid-parent. Sorry, Ellie, I just...can't. I admire you. I want to, but...I'm sorry._

 _Maybe someday._

ooOoo

Sarah's dad got in touch. Out of the blue sky. High-rolled and low-balled into town and back into her life. There was a voicemail on her phone; he wanted to see her.

It had been years. She panicked, paced her apartment. Thought about leaving town for a few days, if she could get Beckman to allow it. But if he had found her now, he would find her again. The main thing was making sure that no one else knew he was in town. That meant refusing to tell Chuck about her evening plans when Chuck asked her on a fake-date. She hated to do it. Predictably, he pushed, wanting to know more, worried about what she might have planned, and she made it worse by telling him it was 'personal'. That both made it sound more like a date and somehow more intimate. It also contrasted starkly with her non-use of that word about anything that ever happened between them.

She could try to paper over that later, she needed to get her dad out of town. To do that, she agreed to have dinner with him. As she expected when he mentioned it, he wanted to take her someplace nice. He must be flush.

Sarah got dressed up, the first time she had done that for a non-mission in a long time. Her dad showed up, on time, surprisingly, and looking much as he had the last time she had seen him. She thought he was there to ask for something. _Take, not give._ But he never asked. Dinner started fine. They made small talk, not too uncomfortable, although Sarah was staying in her cover and her father was her father, so the small talk, though plentiful, was vanishingly small small talk. Neither said something that gave anything away.

And of course, Chuck showed up, and Stanford computer-engineered an incredibly awkward meeting with her father. She had to introduce Chuck as her boyfriend, and her father was immediately suspicious. The evening sputtered. Chuck found a way to leave before they did, and her father watched Chuck leave with a raised eyebrow. Unlike most who raised an eyebrow when they saw Sarah with Chuck, her father was not thinking about Chuck as less attractive than his daughter. He was thinking of him as a Middletowner, despite his being in LA. A schnook - first-cousin to schmucks.

Her father kept waiting for her to break her con to him, tell him the play. He simply was certain she was not really dating Chuck.

 _Funny. Bitterly._ That was true. And not true.

Her father's ability to read was as good as he thought. He might have believed it if she and Chuck had been a real couple. Maybe not, maybe he would simply have rejected the evidence of his senses in favor of his conviction that he "raised her right". But he would not have rejected the idea quite so categorically. The 'cover' in their dating was apparent to him, even if he did not understand its reality.

It turned out that he had come to give her something. He had managed a lifetime con in Dubai, conning a sheik out of millions of dollars. When Sarah was uninterested in a share of the money, he became more puzzled about her and her current life.

Sarah and Chuck and Casey got drawn into her father's crazy Lichtenstein con; the sheik had followed her father to LA to claim the building he 'owned'. They managed to capture the sheik, a very bad guy, and to freeze his accounts.

Her father, who taught her to trust no one, trusted Chuck, the schnook. He transferred millions into Chuck's account. Her father called it betting on Chuck. In particular, he bet on the schnook's being in love with Sarah. Her father was, he pointed out, a winner where that bet was concerned. 'Bet', 'trust': their being synonyms was lost on her father. It was the first time since Carina that anyone had acknowledged that Chuck loved her, and even though she knew it, it warmed her to hear it, especially from her father, especially in a compliment to Chuck, if a back-handed one (that was the best Jack Burton gave).

She decided that Chuck was right. Earlier in the series of events, Sarah had offered to take her father into custody. Chuck called it a conflict of interest. Maybe that was technically wrong, but it was emotionally right. Sarah lived enough emotional conflict. She managed to maneuver her father to safety before the team of police came to arrest him.

She chose her dad over the job.

Chuck had met her father. He now had an idea about her childhood. Earlier, he had glimpsed her high school years, Heather, Gale. His assumptions about her past were being taken from him. But he seemed wholly undeterred by his new knowledge of her. He loved her, knowing what he now knew.

 _Chuck loves me._

 _And Dad likes him._

 _Being loved by Chuck is an adventure._

* * *

CANTO 2: Con(sequence)s: Frost Circus, Charmed Life?

* * *

Met in the summer and walked 'til the fall  
And breathless we talked, it was tongues  
Despite what they'll say, wasn't youth, we hit the truth

Faces of strummer that fell from the wall  
But nothing is left where they hung  
Sweet and bitter, they're what we found  
So drink them down and

Walk out to winter, swear I'll be there  
Chill will wake you, high and dry, you'll wonder why  
Walk out to winter, swear I'll be there  
Chance is buried just below the blinding snow

Walk out to winter, swear I'll be there  
Chill will wake you, high and dry, you'll wonder why  
Walk out to winter, swear I'll be there  
You blind, snow blind, this is why, this is why

\- Aztec Camera, _Walk Out to Winter_

* * *

Sarah pulled the trigger. She was wired to do it, trained could do it. Terrified to do it, terrified not to do it. She could do it. She did it.

The fight had been vicious - and close. Too close. Mauser was good. There was so much to lose. Her fears for Chuck were so near the surface. Her emotions were so raw, her heart so exposed. Out of her chest - enlarged - flopping on the ground, creating a blood-colored skirt around the Christmas trees. She was heartless when she pulled the trigger. She pulled it for the sake of her heart.

For Chuck.

To keep her heart safe.

She had hunted Mauser through the Christmas trees. As she moved, she could feel the charm bracelet move along her wrist, falling down against her hand or moving up her arm.

Sarah was on full-alert, her situational awareness a radar installation.

This was about Chuck.

This was about keeping him alive.

This was about Chuck.

She could hear the slight metallic click of the charms against each other, just as she had when Chuck gave it to her.

It was a gift she should not have accepted. It could not be part of the cover. It meant too much. It was real. Full stop. It could not be made unreal. She could not relocate it in-between, in between real and unreal. To take it was to take it, to take what was offered. But she had nothing comparable to give.

Unless it was this: the execution of Mauser.

She could not wear the bracelet on her familiar continuum, _more real, less real, still less real_. It was just plain, undeniable, solid _reality_. Different in kind and not degree from the fake.

She had never been more pleased with a gift in her life, more touched. She could not refuse it. How could she? It was eloquent: it was Chuck's love for her extended in space and time, made material, his own charm encharmed. It was his mother's love for her family extended to Sarah by Chuck's love for her. Sarah was encharmed, charmed, so deeply moved that she spoke her actual, occurrent thought: "This is something real."

That something real was on her wrist when she pulled the trigger. When Mauser fell, her eyes fell to the dangling heart charm on the bracelet. Chuck's heart. Her heart.

She had just stopped Mauser's heart. Bullet to the head.

Chuck had been ahead of her, stolen a march on her. He knew what his gift meant. He knew it was irreducibly and fully real. He put it on her and she let him. She accepted a symbol of his love for her. And then she had executed a man while she wore it.

 _Assassin. Conwoman. Undeserving._ The charm bracelet on her wrist was a promise from Chuck, his way of telling her what he had told her in his second apology for Jill. He was keeping the faith.

She shattered it with a round from her S&W. The only thing she had to give him in exchange for the bracelet was her protection. She...cared about him. So much. But that had to remain veiled by the cover. Once again, although Sarah knew how he really felt and he had at best hedged guesses about her feelings, a darkling collection of Sibylline comments, a few kisses (one judged a mistake, the other forced by Roan Montgomery, one outside her high school), Chuck was the one who could do the real thing. He was wired that way.

She was a trained killer. She had killed before. Men. A few women. All under orders. Terminations, executions. Enforcing for Graham. Suddenly, unexpectedly, faces flashed into her mind. Faces from the past, terminations. Some faces near to hers, knife victims, some distant, scoped for death, rifle victims. The faces rushed by, a churning Styx stream of death-visaged faces. All hers. Her dead. Now, Mauser too.

Why did this feel so different?

" _So this is Christmas and what have you done?"_

She heard the song, the lyric, begin in the distance somewhere. Tinny. Small speakers in the lot. She had blocked the music before, a distraction.

Why did this feel so different?

She knew.

She had not known until that moment. She was no longer the Enforcer. She was no longer the Ice Queen, despite standing there in the freezing cold, gun up, Mauser down - down for good. Sounds: metallic tinkling, and a final exhalation from Mauser's body, air escaping for the last time from his chest. Sarah sighed but not in response to Mauser's death gasp. She did not want this adventure, these adventures.

She was not who she used to be. This was not something she could do anymore. Her strategies for containing it were breaking down. Her dead were rising: she had just seen their faces for the first time since she last saw them as living faces. She could, and would, kill in self-defense, or defense of those she was sworn to protect. And she was sworn to protect Chuck. She had told him he was protected. She would always protect him.

She was his guardian. Killing Mauser was self-defense. In a way. Chuck meant more to Sarah than Sarah meant to Sarah. She knew standing there that she would die for him. Not professionally, or not just that. She would die for him personally. She willed his good more than her own. It was not professional. It was personal.

What had Jill said? _Be fair to Chuck._ She had to kill Mauser to keep Chuck safe. Fulcrum was into Langley, into the Company at large, too deep. She did not know who to trust. Mauser's threat was not an idle boast. It was a clear and present danger to Chuck. Sarah ended the threat. It was not an execution. It was an execution. It was somehow in-between. _Damn me._

She finally lowered the gun. She felt weak and cold. She stood there for a moment, gathering herself, then she called Casey. He would see to Mauser. To Mauser's corpse.

Sarah needed Chuck. That was all she could think about. She needed him in her arms, to be in his arms. She had killed Mauser. She had been face-to-face with the faces of her past. Experiences she had refused had returned in demanding array. Core-shaken, heart-hurt, she went into the Buy More. Inside, she saw Chuck. Her aspect shifted. She immediately felt warmer. Not good but okay. She would need time. But she composed herself. She could not let Chuck guess what had happened. What she had done. How could she explain it?

She ran to him, grabbed him, kissed him. The kiss and embrace lasted only a fraction of the time Sarah needed, but she could not reveal her need. She told him he was safe. She got the Fulcrum agent. That was not a lie, misleading, but not a lie.

But Chuck asked what happened, and then Sarah lied. To his face. And the warmth she felt started to leave her, drained from her slowly even as she hugged Ellie and Devon and shared Ellie's excitement about the charm bracelet. It was real. It was now an accessory to the shooting and to Sarah's lie. Maybe she had discovered how to make it unreal after all: by her putting it on.

Chuck was distant when they parted but Sarah was too upset herself to push him. Too afraid. She went to her apartment and put her gun away. She stripped herself of her Orange Orange outfit and turned on the shower. She turned the water to hot. Scalding. The last thing she took off before climbing in was the charm bracelet. She rested it on the bathroom sink and she stared at it through the glass of her shower door as she stood under the burning water. When she finished and toweled off, she picked the bracelet up carefully and took it into her room. She put it down on her pillow. She got dressed for bed, slipped under the covers. Then she put the bracelet back on. She turned the light off. In the dark, she turned the bracelet around and around her wrist, like a rosary, moving her fingers from charm to charm. Sleep came slowly. But it also came dreamlessly. Her sleep was charmed.

ooOoo

Things were off after that, however.

Sarah was off. Chuck was off. Sarah knew something was bothering him. Seemed still to be bothering him since he had been distant the night of Mauser. She asked him about it finally, after they had gotten the rock star out of town, and he told her. He saw her shoot the Fulcrum agent. She quickly conceded that she had lied. She tried to explain it...professionally. To apologize for the lie by making it part of the job (her old strategy: never let him _know it was personal._ ) Chuck was working hard to accept it, and, truth be told, he was doing better than Sarah, she thought. She had not yet fully comprehended the event or the changes she felt as a consequence of it.

She told Chuck a truth. "I have to protect you." But she made it sound like her professional obligation, like it was merely her job.

"You deserve…" Sarah hesitated for a second: _You deserve someone better than me. Someone wired as you are. A real girl. The girl who should have my charm bracelet, who should have my guy._ "You deserve...some time off…"

But Chuck did not take it. He went on the next mission and he seemed to have reconciled himself to Mauser. But Sarah was not reconciled to her response to Chuck.

After that mission, she had been in her apartment, restless. She had put the charm bracelet away. She wore it at night sometimes, to feel close to Chuck, to be charmed. But she slipped it on and slipped on her blue Orange Orange hoodie. She grabbed her keys and called Chuck on the way to her Porsche. He met her at a burger place on the outskirts of town, a place to which they had never gone.

They sat down and ordered from an over-friendly waiter. When he left, Sarah made herself speak. It was why they were there. _Be fair to Chuck._

"Chuck, about the Fulcrum agent." He gave her an immediate look; she had his attention, she did not need to add specifics. "I did do what I had to do. And, as I know flashes have shown you, that was not the first time I have killed. And I have killed on missions." He nodded cautiously, uncertain where she was heading. "You know that...but what bothered you about the Fulcrum agent was that he was unarmed, defenseless, right?" Nods. "Chuck, has Casey told you anything about me?"

He shook his head. "No, not much. Not directly. Normally he just uses you...to torment me." _Yes, and he does the reverse to me, Chuck. He's worried that I am compromised. Or maybe he's worried that someone other than him will figure it out?_ "But I see how he treats you, Sarah. He defers to you. I believe he's even a little bit afraid of you."

Sarah looked down at the table top then back up to Chuck. The waiter stopped by with beers and she waited for him to leave. She took a sip before she spoke. "Have you ever wondered why?"

Chuck smiled. "You're Sarah, you can do anything. Casey can see that."

Sarah smiled. "Thanks for that again, Chuck. But that's not the reason. I have done...things like Mauser before…After things with my dad, I went on to do things for Graham." She let that hang in the air. She saw the brown of Chuck's eyes deepen.

"Oh." Chuck picked up his beer and took a long swallow. He put it down on the table and began to peel the label, staring at his hands as he did so. The food came and they ate in silence. Sarah was beginning to freak out a little when Chuck finally said something to her.

"I guessed as much, you know. The things I saw in my flashes. I never thought that they were all. You've been an agent for more than a decade. I knew Graham respected your abilities. That you were...are the best.

"I've had a lot of time…and a lot of motivation...to spend nights...wondering...about what you have done for the CIA. Casey obviously respected Carina, grudgingly, but he never walked on eggshells around her as he does with you sometimes. John Casey does not do eggshells unless he honestly believes he is in danger…

"So, yes, Sarah, I have wondered why and I have been more or less sure about the answer. You are a...dangerous woman."

Sarah looked at him. His eyes darkened further.

 _Ok, 'dangerous woman' is your term for it - but you understand. I am a killer. I have been a killer._

"Why are you telling me this, Sarah?"

She reached up her sleeve. The cuff of her thin, black-leather jacket had kept the charm bracelet out of sight until she pulled it into view. She saw Chuck's eyes widen.

"Because I want you to understand why I...can't keep this. I am not the girl who is supposed to get this from you. She's out there somewhere, Chuck. And you will find her. A normal girl. She will be sweet. And good. And true."

She unfastened the clasp and took the bracelet off. She tried to extend it to Chuck, but her arm seemed unwilling to unbend, and she held it instead over the table, between them.

Chuck reached out, met her hand in the middle. "No, Sarah. I gave it to you. I won't take it back. You don't have to wear it. I never thought you could. But it was my symbol of keeping the faith. I want you to keep it."

"But, Chuck, what I just told you…what you know, just that little..."

"...Changes nothing. I was pretty sure about all that anyway before I gave you the bracelet."

"But your reaction afterward. How bothered you were…." Sarah had moved the bracelet back to her side of the table, she noticed.

Chuck did too. "Sarah, it is one thing to infer something, another thing to flash on it, and still another to witness it in the flesh. I meant what I told you. There are parts of this I don't think I will ever get used to…"

 _I don't want you to get used to them, Chuck. You are already too close to it. And your feelings for me keep pulling you closer._

"...But I was bothered by witnessing it. Not by you, not really. I just...I had never seen anything like that before. And, yes, it was more disturbing because it was you. But I am wrapping my head around it; I am trying to understand what being a spy has meant for you, what it means to be a spy."

He paused but she could see that he was searching for words. She braced herself.

"But what matters most to me is this," he pointed to her and then to him, the table, then the bracelet, now clutched in her hand. "That you are bothered enough about Mauser to come here, tell me what you told me, try to return the bracelet.

"If you were the sort of dangerous woman you think, you would never have done any of this. I don't know about your past, only a few flash details. I don't know why you did what you did, or how you have dealt with it, but I know that you are not heartless. I don't believe you have ever been heartless."

 _Oh, Chuck, I have been heartless. Or - my heart spent a lot of years AWOL. It's reporting for duty now. And I want to keep the bracelet, although I will not wear it again where it could be seen._

After a moment's indecision, Sarah put the bracelet back on. Carina had told her, back in the CATs days, not to let anyone make the final decision on Sarah but Sarah. Chuck gave her a small, secret smile when she looked up from fixing the clasp. She pushed the bracelet back up her sleeve, keeping it, and returned his smile instead.

* * *

CANTO 3: Commitment: Temptations in the Desert

* * *

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

\- Ralph Waldo Emerson

* * *

For Sarah, things were better than they had been after that, even more relaxed. Cover dates contained fewer awkward moments, the cuddling more natural, the cover kisses (restrained but) more present, less punctuation, hello, goodbye. She had to fight herself though because she knew Beckman was suspicious. But the fighting was getting harder and harder. She was losing herself in moments with Chuck. Not on missions, but on dates and even in Castle.

They did have a fight about Morgan and a mission. And Sarah weathered another moment in which she thought she had lost Chuck and she lost control. But they got through that, and they ended closer, with a better understanding that, whatever else they were or weren't, they were friends.

Then they got sent to the suburbs, to pose as a married couple. The Carmichaels. And just how much more than friends also became apparent to them both. Sarah finally cooked an omelet for Chuck. They had a dog as part of their cover. Rings. They were home, together.

But they weren't. They were in the Fulcrum Intersect cul-de-sac from hell, and they were lucky to get out with their lives and their minds. Chuck had saved Sarah yet again. After the mission ended, she knew that the suburban house they used was still staged, and that it would be available to them for another night. She and Chuck could go back...and see what happened. She felt so close to him, so close to her future. But she had to talk to Beckman, debrief, before she could approach Chuck, ask him to go back to the suburbs with her. See what happened. Sarah was feeling reckless; she had been waiting for Chuck for so long. They were so close...

Beckman ruined everything. She told Sarah that Chuck was in the worst danger he had ever been in, that Fulcrum was close. And then she said it. "Agent Walker, the honeymoon is over." Sarah did not betray herself, but she fully understood Beckman's double-meaning. Yes, Chuck was genuinely in great danger. They needed to be as vigilant as they could. But Beckman used 'honeymoon' for a reason. She was letting Sarah know, face-to-face that she suspected that Sarah was compromised.

 _Yes. But I can do the job. I have kept Chuck from full knowledge. I can keep doing it. I can take control of the situation, or there will be no situation to control. And it is not just that I want to be here; my first priority, personal and professional, is Chuck's safety._

After the debrief, Chuck was upstairs. _Oh, no. He had the same thought. My thought._ He asked about returning to the suburbs. The implication was clear. We can go and be the Carmichael's for a night. _Not exactly the way I would understand it. But not the way he would, either._ They could have fun. And feeling as Sarah had before Beckman's debrief, they would have had fun. And so much more than fun. _But I turned up Agent Walker and turned him down. Abrupt about-face. As I do, I hurt him._ _Crushed him. I can feel the distance we have covered since Mauser, start to increase again._ The most brutal moment was the moment when she demanded the fake wedding ring back. _The honeymoon is over. I get to end it._

Sarah was again the instrument of her own defeat. After Chuck trudged away from her icy response to his invitation, she got to go and oversee the dismantling of the suburbs house. For a moment, she had the home she was trying to imagine, with the man she knew she wanted. _What did Jill say? A spell. Magic is impermanent. My reward for treating Chuck as I just did. Dismantling my own wishes._

It got worse.

Sarah had been too harsh. As always, when she had to contain her own feelings about Chuck while confronting him, she overreacted. Denying herself almost always sloshed over and turned into denying Chuck, hurting him. There was no need for Sarah to do what she had done, revert to the handler she had tried to be after Bryce's first visit. She was supposed to be the one comfortable with all the degrees between real and unreal, and yet she vaulted from so-close-to-real to all-but-unreal so quickly she gave Chuck's heart whiplash.

Chuck broke up with her the next day. She overheard the conversation between him and Ellie. It was like being dragged over broken glass. Ellie telling Chuck Sarah was not _the one._ That if Sarah was not the one, he should cut her lose. At least Sarah had time to prepare to face Chuck this time. She found him in the Buy More and asked him to come to the Orange Orange, but she was not going to freeze him out this time. She listened to him explain - as, it turned out, did Casey - and she tried to talk him out of it. There was no reason the honeymoon ending needed to mean that their cover dating (their dating) should end.

 _He gave me the charm bracelet. He said he would keep the faith. He was trying. We were trying. Until Beckman took it from us. Fulcrum took it from us. The universe…_

Sarah tried to give Chuck a story to tell his family and friends, a story about why Sarah and he were stuck in a relationship that never seemed to move forward. Sarah knew the story was a little tinny, but as she told it, she warmed to it. "We don't feel the need to label it."

But that was the problem. Chuck did feel the need. And, worse, Sarah knew why. Because she knew that for months now she had been avoiding labels; she had kept from wording her feelings for Chuck. _Liked_ him. _Cared_ for him. Chuck got her on some deep level, and he knew that her keeping him from really knowing how she felt was predicated on her keeping herself from really knowing. As long as she was out-of-focus to herself, she could remain out-of-focus to Chuck, could seem unsure - because, to a crucial extent, she was.

Chuck looked at her earnestly and told her that the tinny story was itself just another lie. "We will never really be together."

And they were back at the fountain again, after all this time, after all these changes. The fundamental problem. She was an agent. He was the Intersect. He loved her. She...cared about him. She wished for a future she did nothing to bring about. She was - and this was perhaps the most maddening thought of a morning of maddening thoughts for Sarah - content-ish in between. She could enjoy what she had. A man she enjoyed (if not in all the ways she wanted), a place that was feeling increasingly like home, a group of people who felt increasingly like her family. As she had often thought, it was more than she deserved. And if she pushed for more, anytime she was contemplating pushing for more, she got pushed back. Beckman. Somebody. Something. _The honeymoon is over._ What could she do but accept it? She did. Casey celebrated. He seemed genuinely relieved.

So she did. Accept it. And the universe had a treat waiting. A seduction mission that Chuck got to be involved in. It really was shades of Bryce's visit all over again. Except for this time, the Lon Kirk part was played by an MI6 agent, Cole Barker. The team finally figured out who he was and he banded with them to help with the Fulcrum threat.

Barker made it obvious early that he wanted to sleep with Sarah. He was handsome, a bit glib, a bit cocky, but warmer and more open than Bryce. An adventurer, as much Allan Quatermain as James Bond.

He put on the full-court press. Mission craziness led to him saving her life, swashbuckler-style, and to them enduring torture together. Later, alone with him in Castle, he had taken the chance, grabbed Sarah and pulled her to him. She looked at him and she yielded. She kissed him.

Everything washed over her at once.

The fountain break-up.

Chuck sleeping with Jill.

Shooting Mauser.

The charm bracelet she loved but could not wear.

The frustrations of the suburbs.

The most recent break-up.

The whole damn existential cul-de-sac (" _we will never_ _really_ _be together_ ") they were trapped in.

 _The honeymoon is over. We'll never_ _really_ _be together._

Barker was attractive and attracted to her. It had been so long…She could surrender to this momentary desire, submit to the despair that dogged her steps...Bread in the desert.

She let herself sink into the kiss. She could have this. _Easy._ No strings. Spy romance. A week, a month, almost certainly no more. But pleasant, pleasurable. No suffering. No despair. A release.

She could go. Escape. She could request a vacation or re-assignment.

Beckman's worries about Sarah would almost certainly get Sarah what she requested. Beckman could not simply replace Sarah as long as Sarah had done nothing wrong, at least nothing Beckman could prove (nothing unequivocal), but she would no doubt jump at the chance if Sarah asked for a replacement.

But then the kiss ended.

Sarah's head was foggy, her heart pounding. But it was pounding in a complicated rhythm - in response to the situation but also in response to her hopes. Yes, she wanted Barker in the moment, circumstances conspired in his favor. But as she pulled away from him and walked to another part of Castle, that part of her that she was coming more and more to be, that part of her that was free, told her she kissed the wrong man. She wanted Chuck for a lifetime.

She would not give in to desire and despair. She would keep the faith. She would not desert Chuck. Desert herself. Her momentary desire cooled and eventually vanished.

Cole was captured by Fulcrum. Since he knew Chuck was the Intersect, Beckman made what was, for Sarah, a heart-spinning reversal. Chuck was to be watched 24/7. He and Sarah would have to move in together.

The honeymoon was a possibility. Sarah had to guard her response. Chuck was wary of the situation, and seemed oddly focused on Cole and on her worries about Cole. She was worried about Cole, but he was an MI6 agent, he had asked for this life and this assignment, he was capable of taking care of himself.

Sarah was focused on Chuck, on the possibilities of living together. She was not sure what it would mean, but just spending the night with him at his house, waking in his bed, brushing her teeth beside him in the bathroom...all that was satisfying and exciting. He was what she wanted. Thinking about living with him made her giddy.

Barker escaped from Fulcrum and started the full-court press again, telling Sarah about his interest in her, about how wonderful it was to find someone you care about, someone to whom you are more than name, rank and serial number. But Barker misunderstood. Yes, Sarah tended to his wounds, and she attended to his words, but she was hearing him describing her relationship to Chuck, not her relationship to him. He was pleading Chuck's case and Chuck did not need the help. Sarah knew which man she wanted. Barker figured that out for himself, although he made one final play for her. She refused.

When Barker left, she went to Chuck's. He was not there, so she sat down on the edge of the fountain. _Here I am again._

Chuck arrived. He seemed surprised to hear that Barker was gone but she was still there. As she sat there, Sarah realized that Chuck must have seen her kiss Barker, or must have heard something from Cole that made him think she was interested in Barker.

She started to explain, to say something, but Chuck stopped her. He told her that he was crazy about her and always had been. But that he could not move in with her for that reason. As frustrating as that was, especially in light of recent days, Sarah accepted it. She knew he was right. If they lived together, they would end up sleeping together. But that would somehow become cover-tainted too. It would not mean what it should to them. They would be sleeping together but still with no chance of ever really being together.

Chuck did not want that. And neither did Sarah. She thought for a moment of her fitful, sparse sexual past. _What had Carina called it? Her 'tight-assed ascetic assassin life.'_ Even with Bryce, she had not found out what she wanted to know, had not gotten what she needed. She believed she could do both with Chuck, but not under just any conditions. The game she was playing was demanding, it required sacrifice, it hurt. It was slow going. The end was not in view. But she was playing for the big prize. All the marbles. For longing and belonging yoked together. For fire and peace intermingled. For...something more…A game that was not zero-sum. A game she had faith she and Chuck could win together.

Chuck gave her a pointed look and made a vow to her. He vowed that he would one day get the Intersect out of his head and have the future he wanted with the woman he loved. It reminded Sarah for a second of what she had said to him at the burger place, when she tried to return the bracelet: the woman he loved was out there. He would find her. But then she knew that he meant her, and meant her to know it. He was telling her that he loved her, coming at it sideways, so as not to terrify her. It made her heart race. She had to stifle her reaction, the smile of deep pleasure that threatened to up-turn her face.

But she was not terrified. Barker had made her head foggy for a minute but he had helped defog her heart.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for a special little chapter, Chapter 32 "Mission 564". We are about to close out S2. One story to go after Chapter 32. Thanks for sticking with me.

If you are out there, reading but not reviewing or PMing, how about dropping me a line? Be more than a number. Cole Barker would approve.

 **A/N3** Canto 1 is for _Chesterton._ He got me thinking about _Furr_ and its place in Delorean. In a longer treatment of the episode, I would have made the placement more patent. I hope he will enjoy the latent placement.

Canto 2 is for _WvonB_. In part, it is a bouncing echo of themes in his brilliant "Sarah vs. the Darkness", a small, bright gem of Chuck fanfiction, one of my all-time favs. If you haven't read it, do. If you aren't reading his current story, "Second Chances", do that too.

Canto 3 is for _PeterOinNYC_ and _Grayroc._ For their help talking about parts of it.


	32. Mission 564

**A/N1** _D_ _ay 564_. Immortalized in Sarah's video log. (Another key element in reading the show right to left, by the way.)

When was it in the timeline of the show?

There are various theories, but no definitive answer. I doubt the writers chose the number by performing acrobatic reverse-Nostradamic contortions. My guess is they simply wanted a number of days longer than a year and shorter than two, greater than 365 and less than 730.

564 is right at about a year and a half, and I think that was what the writers wanted. I also think they regarded each season, including the shortened S1, as a year in Chuck and Sarah's time. So the point was to locate the crucial day sometime in mid S2. That's my fancy theory (ahem!).

Where does that put the day, then? Well, there're a number of possible placements, but Sarah says it was a quiet day, no mission, so I take it not to be an episode day. It has to be an _off-camera_ sort of day. Quiet. But in relation to which episode(s)? After Santa Claus seems possible, but right after? After Suburbs? But before the Barker kiss? So when?

Between the end of the Beefcake arc and the beginning of the Orion arc. Anyway, that is where I am placing it. It doesn't happen at the fountain when Chuck (indirectly) tells Sarah he loves her, but it is an extension of the long, thoughtful look on Sarah's face that begins there.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

 _Mission 564_

* * *

I am in love  
I am in love  
And I am a fool  
There is no other

I am in love  
I am in love

Into the fire  
Tears start coming  
Good stars surround us  
It's enough to want to make you wonder

\- Crowded House, _I am in Love_

* * *

Chuck loves me.

I mean, I knew. I know. But he never just said it. I guess he still hasn't, _exactly_. But it was close enough.

He used the word.

And although he said 'the girl' his eyes were on _me_.

Oddly, that even made it more special. He turned my words when I tried to return the charm bracelet (my words about the girl) around on me, made it obvious to me that I had been talking about _me_ then - at least that's how _he_ understood my words. _Chuck._

I feel festive.

There's been some sort of electrical problem in the mall with the Orange Orange this morning. It hasn't affected the Buy More. It actually hasn't affected the Orange Orange (generators in Castle). But when I report it to Beckman, she tells me to shut the OO down. I have no paperwork I need to do, and I do not want to work out or fiddle with firearms. I don't want to be in the dark of Castle. Festive. Chuck loves me.

It's a festival day. Me. He loves me.

Chuck is at work. Casey is there with him. I am free. I decide to take the day for me, to luxuriate in Chuck's word. _Love._

Carina has crossed my mind lately. Things she has said to me. She was the first to tell me that Chuck loved me. (Dad was the second.) I am beginning to think that Carina has been ahead of me all along, somehow understood me better than I understand myself. _Headstone_. I wonder if she would still call me that, if she could see me now, today?

Thinking of Carina makes me think of that spa day in Iceland. I decide that is what I will do. Spa. Pamper me. Luxuriate in that word. In the thought of the speaker of that word. _The universe hates me...but Chuck loves me. Can those really be true together?_ I don't like one answer to that question, so I quell it. I check online for a nice, nearby day spa. I find one. _rA Organic Spa._ Odd name, _rA_ , but okay.

I grab my bag from the locker in Castle and check the alarms as I head out. I want to see Chuck but I feel so buoyant and light, I do not trust myself. I might just take him into my arms and float away with him, hot-air-balloon him up to some secret blue above and make love to him until we both fall asleep, our bodies a sated puzzle of his and hers.

Floating. Light. Festival. My Mission: Festival Day.

I arrive at the spa - even nicer than it looked online. At the desk, they ask what I want.

 _The Chuck Bartowski._ That sounds... _so good_. _But then I remember Lou. I rephrase; it's all in my head anyway. I want my guy. My guy. I am the girl, his girl. His girl. I am his girl._

I remember the floating massage in Iceland, but there's no replicating that here. Still, warm, floating...

What do I want? I look at the list of services.

… _.Mudbath._

 _Mudbath?_ Why not?

An attendant leads me to a section of the spa at a distance from the front desk. She shows me the door to the mudbaths, then leads me to a small room to change in, well-stocked with towels, potpourri, fresh fruit, and bottled water.

I carefully pick out a strawberry and bite into it with tender deliberation, my mind...elsewhere...My lips linger on it. So good. _So good_. I savor the bite and swallow it. I eat it all, slowly. I open a bottle of water and take a long sip.

I slip out of my clothes and underwear and wrap myself in a towel that must be made from some elven fabric Chuck and Morgan would know the name of. _Middle Earth. Not Middletown. No more Middletown for me, not like with Dad._ The towel is large and it must have been somehow warmed because I can feel its warmth around me. _Elven. Gale_. _Married to Robert. Baby Jenny. Future guardian angel._ I don't feel as bad today about past Jenny: _me_. Chuck loves me. I've felt better about myself lately. I feel good about myself right now.

I pad down the hallway to the mudbaths. The same attendant is waiting for me. She briefly explains how it works. She'll be there for a little while, to make sure I am comfy, to make sure I have all I want. _No, not all. But it's a good day, a festival day._ The attendant helps me climb up and then down into the mud. It is far warmer than I expected, almost hot, but not uncomfortable. And, surprise, a good surprise, I am then afloat in the mud. The attendant brings a small pitcher of cold water and a glass. She puts it on a table beside me, in easy reach. Then she puts out a small plate of cucumber slices. For my _eyes_ , she adds quickly, not to eat. Finally, she adds a basket of cooled washcloths. I settle into the mud. She puts a cucumber slice on each eye. I feel no pressure anywhere. I am suspended. Weightless. Free. An imponderable.

Slowly, I do something I almost never do. Never do. I let my mind relax. I go limp physically and mentally. My mind wanders, takes its own path, not the path I dictate. My heart provides the soundtrack.

Sheryl Crow's _Strong Enough_ was on the sound system in the OO earlier. I had been singing along under my breath, absentmindedly.

As I float in the mud, the words come back to me, autobiographical and urgent. Chuck's strength.

 _Are you strong enough to be my man?_

The strength I need. Not the fraternal-twin strengths of Bryce and Barker. Not the strength to sweep me off my feet and make me _forget_ for a little while, only to leave me, leave me eventually, as they found me - or worse. No, that is not what I need, not what I have ever needed, even if I have been confused about it, for months with Bryce, for a moment with Barker. No. Not the strength to make me forget. The strength to sweep me off my feet and make me _remember._ The strength to let me find my way, to find myself. The strength to light my way, to lighten my load. _To handle my baggage, body bags and all._ To believe _in_ me. The strength - and, God, what strength - to let me fold, spindle and mutilate him as I work through all my twists and turns. And snap back, keep snapping back. The strength to stay.

 _Please don't leave._

Stay. He has waited and waited for me. He has waited and waited for a word. He has waited and waited for something clear, not vague, something univocal, not equivocal, something headed somewhere, not walked back. He has waited and waited for me...

...to love him. Of course, I have all along. All along.

All...along?

 _I love Chuck Bartowski. I_ _ **love**_ _Chuck Bartowski. I love Chuck!_

I float for a moment, not breathing.

My heart fills my head. And I am fully, and finally, fearfully aware, awake, absolutely sure: _I am in love with Chuck Bartowski._

How can this be a revelation?

I have known all along. Haven't I? Sort of? Yes, no, maybe. I've played the same guessing game with my feelings I have kept Chuck playing. I knew when I could not take the shot. I knew in the girls' shower, fighting Heather. I knew when Gale described Chuck as beautiful. I knew. I knew and I knew and I knew.

And I would not know. But why? It feels so wonderful. Why would I not know what I knew and knew? Because I cannot love him and leave things as they are. Because Jill was right. _I hate that._ I have to be fair to Chuck. And that means that if I know I love him, and I do, I do, I do, then I have to commit to this. I cannot simply speculate idly about a future. Make wishes. I have to _try._

But our mess is still our mess. Beckman suspects. My knowing is not going to help with that. It will make it worse. Chuck joked about beaming so bright Beckman would see him from DC. Ditto, Chuck. _I am a lighthouse for spaceships_. How can I keep her from knowing but let Chuck know? Can I let Chuck know? Or will I have to wait until we can escape this life, the trap we are in?

 _And what can I offer Chuck once we escape? What kind of future can I give him?_ I have handled the words in my head: 'wife', 'mother', 'family'. But I have never taken full possession of them. _Can I? Can I finally walk away from this life? I am nothing but a spy. Okay, maybe a little more, but not much, not yet._ I want to be with Chuck. But it is not that simple.

I push the worries away. They will still be there tomorrow. For today, I am going to let myself luxuriate in knowing that Chuck loves me and I love Chuck.

Another thought strikes me. Why would I not know what I knew? Because I did not want the universe to know. A secret. The universe let Chuck love me. But would it let me love Chuck, will it? Because if I love him, and I do, I do, I do, then I cannot just be a hateful thing, a hated thing. If I can love, there is good in me. There _is_ good in me. Chuck believes. I believe. _I believe, Chuck, help my unbelief._

I love Chuck Bartowski.

I don't know what to do about it.

But I love Chuck Bartowski.

I reach over and grab one of the washcloths. I have no idea how long I have been afloat in the mud, but it has been a while. I remove the cucumber slices, wipe my face, surprised to find that I have been crying, tears in the mud. The attendant comes in and tells me it is time for the mineral water whirlpool bath, and the other post-mudbath treatments. I put the cloth down and smile at her. It must be a good smile because she gives me a good one back, real, not perfunctory. I put my hands on the edges of the mudbath and rise.

I feel regenerate, new. Confused, a little. Everything around me seems brighter, better defined, the colors more saturated. My depth of field has increased. Everything seems more real. No, not _more_ real. Just... _real_.

I head to the whirlpool.

* * *

 **A/N2** Mission 564. Been waiting to write that. [Long writer's sigh...]

Tune in next time as we begin the sequence that ends S2, Chapter 33, "Imperfect Execution."


	33. Imperfect Execution (One)

**A/N1** When you take on Sarah's POV and try to imagine her predicament, you come to realize how often it is _one-step-forward-two-steps-back-and-into-a-bear-trap_. This chapter takes us through Colonel. It focuses on Broken Heart. On Sarah's predicament and confusion.

Thanks to those reading and reviewing. I am running behind on responses but I will catch up.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

 _Imperfect Execution (Part One)_ :

 _Check or Mate?_

* * *

Leap of faith - yes, but only after reflection.

\- Soren Kierkegaard

* * *

It should have happened.

It would have happened, if not for Morgan.

 _IOU, are you kidding me? Morgan owes me eternally. I will hunt him from beyond the grave._

Of course, if it had happened, it might have been a case of _Colonel Interruptus_. But neither Sarah nor Chuck knew that.

They were free. Sort of. Sarah was free. Sort of. She had done it. Sort of. She had turned her back on her habits, her training, her orders, her past - and she had taken Chuck on the run. But they were not running to their future, exactly, or maybe they were, sort of.

Sort of.

They were running to Chuck's father, to Stephen Bartowski, to Orion. To save Orion and maybe to finally rid Chuck of the Intersect. Chuck's father, the creator of the Intersect.

What they were doing was like a mission, like a _free-lance_ mission. Rogue. Sort of. It could have serious consequences; she might have ended her career, might end up behind bars. There might be no way back. But she and Chuck were operating as spies, still pursuing mission objectives, even if they had given themselves those objectives, and Beckman had not.

None of that mattered right now.

They were going to make love. It was going to happen. It was happening. They were doing it. Making love.

Finally. At last.

Their first time. The first time.

Hands discovered each other, bodies already mutually aware, aligned, alive, aflame. Fingers dallied for a moment, reveling in the touch of uncovered flesh. And then passion, flaring, flaring, an urgency and completeness Sarah had no earthly idea was possible. She was all loving desire for Chuck, every inch of her responsive to every inch of him. Every inch of her prepared to welcome every inch of him.

 _Hallelujah!_

Chuck went to get a condom; Sarah panted, happy beyond measure. Swollen, molten, ready - so far beyond ready.

It did not happen. Morgan. _He owes me eternally._

ooOoo

When they went to bed, Sarah was still acting like she was forsaking her duty, her Beckman-defined duty to put Chuck in a bunker, for the sake of a higher duty, for the sake of justice for Chuck. That was not a lie, but she was doing this for the man she loved, and although she knew justice mattered here, it was not her current motive. Her motive was her love of Chuck. Pure and simple. But she still had not told him how she felt. She wanted to, there, then, away from camera, bugs, and eyes. But she was having a hard time just letting go, accepting what she had done.

A hard time. Making the leap. The leap of faith.

The last few weeks had been about making the leap.

* * *

The first symbol of the leap had been a form, a test: _the 49B_.

Sarah's _Catch-22_.

Sarah had been right about her realization, her finally acknowledging that she loved Chuck: it made her life harder. It made her happy, bubbly happy, in private; she hugged the thought and the feeling to her at her apartment, giggled to herself (a completely novel experience). But outside the apartment, she was less relaxed around Chuck, more worried about giving herself away. She wanted Chuck to know, desperately, but her desperation scared and worried her. And she was scared for him to know, scared it would scare him somehow. Scared. She was.

It would be too easy to make a mistake, too easy to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, let a touch or look linger.

Then Sarah began to worry that she was too worried about making a mistake, too wooden and unrelaxed. She began to worry that she might look too much like she was trying not to seem compromised. _My life is a twisted mess._ _Damned coming, damned going._

Everything had changed; nothing had changed.

Everything was a lot better; everything a little worse.

 _Catch-22._ The universe had her in a vise grip.

Sarah tried to walk a strait path that kept the _status quo_ as the _status quo_ , even while she was no longer _status quo_.

But it had not mattered in the end. Beckman's suspicions gnawed at the little General.

Beckman grew suspicious enough to order a 49B.

For a while, it looked like that form, that test, was going to undo them before Sarah could figure out what to do about her love for Chuck.

She really did not know what to do about it. She now knew she was in love and knew herself helplessly in love.

And the 49B proved it.

ooOoo

Beckman sent in a serious bitch, Forrest. Hannah Traylor but blonde, and with more attitude.

It was apparent to Sarah, from the moment Agent Forrest showed up, that she had been chosen to be Sarah's replacement. That was the plan before the test started. Maybe Sarah could keep it from happening, but the deck was stacked against her before the deal began.

Forrest took over Sarah's role on the next mission. Chuck, _bless him_ , rebelled against Forrest almost from the beginning. As heartwarming as that was, it was bad overall, a further feature of Beckman's stacked test. Beckman chose to send in an agent who would alienate and antagonize Chuck from the get-go, making Sarah's own ties to Chuck, her very different way of 'handling' him, look closer, improper, by contrast.

Given how the test was set up, and given that Forrest was not only the instrument testing Sarah, but also the judge of the results, it was no surprise that Forrest decided that Sarah was compromised and needed to be replaced. And less of a surprise that Forrest was the replacement.

Beckman installed Forrest as Chuck's handler and she ordered Sarah back to Langley. All this time, all this effort, all this suffering, to be sent back to goddamn Langley. To be sent _back._

ooOoo

Sarah was stuck.

Chuck was the Intersect. She had been re-assigned. What they had faced months before was about to happen.

Sarah could not figure out what to do. Stuck. Catch-22 in multiple dimensions. Like that crazy chess game Kirk and Spock played on _Star Trek_ episodes Chuck got her to watch. Like that. Only worse. More dimensions. No winning conditions.

She had to accept, seem to accept, Beckman's order. Sarah had been ordered to leave the man she loved. Forrest was watching Sarah, making sure she accepted the order, got out of Burbank and on the road to DC. Sarah suspected that Beckman might have other agents in the area, ready to respond, perhaps themselves watching her. Sarah went through counter-surveillance procedures of her own. But she never actually saw any other agents, any evidence of any. But she worried. She kept checking over her shoulder, in her rearview mirror.

She had to go. She had not had time to formulate a plan to cope with this. She had nothing.

Chuck was not in immediate danger. There was no looming attack, no smuggling to a bunker, nothing like that. His _not_ being in danger was, bizarrely, Sarah's new, her basic problem. Sarah was supposed to be the threat, in so far as there was a threat.

(Casey had been no help. He seemed caught up in Forrest, and perhaps relieved not to have to continue the _Spy Days of Our Lives_ soap opera he sometimes obviously thought he was trapped in.)

Sarah could leave, go back to Langley, appear to follow orders, and she could formulate a plan there. She could appear to accept the re-assignment and try to find some way to get back to Chuck, back in touch, although she would be working against time and distance and Forrest and Beckman to do it.

Sarah had no sense of what the new CIA director would want her to do. What her re-assignment would prove to be. She had been ordered back to Langley but given no specific further instructions. So far as she knew, the new Director had no Enforcer, had jettisoned Graham's steroidal clandestine fantasies. Sarah _might_ be assigned termination missions, but it had been almost two years since she had done any, and long absences from that sort of work normally meant it was over. Few who left ever went back to it willingly or successfully; those who would usually never left it.

It was more likely that she would be back in the infiltration and seduction game, back to work stealing and protecting secrets, but not protecting a nerd who was the biggest of government secrets. _My nerd_. She could get away, of course, could get back to Burbank, but it would be a massive risk, each visit would be made as Beckman's enemy. Sarah might even become Beckman's excuse for bunkering Chuck.

(Although Sarah expected Beckman to want to see how the new Forrest team worked. Sarah knew that Beckman's suspicions of Sarah were partially anchored in Beckman's frustrated conviction that Sarah coddled Chuck, squeezed less from the Intersect than was there to be squeezed. Beckman wanted more juice from the squeeze. Forrest was just the squeezer to get it.)

If Sarah wanted to do more than visit, somehow, she would have to get Chuck to run, plan it, without Chuck knowing, at least not until the last minute. She would have to commit without knowing whether he would go.

Would he go?

That was really why she had to go now. Why she had to accept Beckman's order. _Chuck_. She was not sure he would go if she asked him to run. Chuck fought for Sarah. He resisted Beckman. He loathed Forrest and her methods. He wanted her there so badly she could feel it coming off him in waves.

But if he was not in active danger, not actively endangering his family and friends, would he really be willing to run? He loved Sarah, but would he simply choose her and a life on the run over Ellie and Devon and Morgan?

Ellie was about to get married. Chuck was hunting for their dad to give Ellie away. Even if she told him how she felt, would he run just to be with her, stay with her? He was envisioning a future for them, together, without the Intersect, not a future on the run, abandoning his family and his friends. How much of that was he willing to give up for a future, such as it would be, with Sarah? Would he choose her over them? Did she want him to?

She did not know the answer to that. She had often felt guilty about being in his life, from almost the beginning, felt like she was a pollutant, dirtying him and besmirching his world. She had apologized to him for it, truthfully, long ago under the truth-serum. She had not resisted its effects as far as telling him _that_ was concerned. She was so glad he was in her life. She was often ashamed to be in his.

And, if she was really honest with herself, to go on the run would be to stay in the spy world. Catch-22. Paradox. She could only escape to the next damn cell over.

She and Chuck would have to live covers, live surveillance and live counter-surveillance disciplines, live the spy world 24/7. They would have not just the US government, but Fulcrum, and God only knew what other eventual players, chasing them. It was one thing to run to that from imminent danger, from a bunker, but from home, even the attenuated form of home Chuck had lived in for the past two years? From no imminent danger?

Sarah did not know the answer to her questions. She would have to leave with them still unanswered. She would have to hope for answers down the line. She was supposed to protect Chuck. She was leaving him behind with a woman who would burn him at a moment's notice, just because he annoyed her.

But what could she do? She had no plan. She did not know if Chuck would go if she had a plan. She did not know if she wanted him to go if she had a plan. _I do, I do, but I shouldn't. I can't do that to him._

When Chuck called just before Sarah left Burbank, she declined to answer. Steeled herself. She needed him to react to the Forrest replacement naturally, not to let on that Sarah had given him any hope that things might change, that there might be a plan in the works. As usual, her way of helping him required her to hurt him.

Sarah could not save Chuck at the moment. She could not save herself. Could not save them. _Goddamn it. The universe….lets me love him so that I am forced give him up._ Maybe she could save him later.

She could do one thing, a parting gift, a promise (even if Chuck did not fully it) that she was not abandoning Chuck, abandoning Burbank. She could not just _go_ , could not just _let go_. She had to _try._ Do something. Give him something. She used her CIA access to attempt to locate Chuck's dad. She intended to at least help him find his Dad.

The result of her search came before she had gotten far from town. She turned the Porsche around and headed home.

She was not sure she would stay, could stay, but she would at least leave Chuck a note, maybe see him once more. Use the gift as her goodbye. Sarah had to _try._ Doing this would be a way of gesturing toward how she felt, though there was nothing in the note but the location of his dad above Sarah's signature.

 _Shit._ She was going to do it to him again. Another Sibylline oracle, but written, this time.

She would do better later. She would play by the rules for a little longer, even though in the last few days she had been running roughshod over the rules.

Sarah saw Chuck's phone in his room and she knew something was wrong.

She ended up enlisting Forrest and Casey, and despite banging heads with Forrest, she was able to save Chuck. Beckman, for whatever reason, let Chuck speak after the mission, and Casey encouraged him to do so. He got Beckman to grant that Sarah's feelings for him and his for her were an asset to their handle/asset dynamic.

 _Chuck. He does not know I love him (the last few days have given him more reason to think I do not) and yet he is the one who figures out what to do about it. Without knowing about it. Chuck._

 _We care about each other, he says._

 _Oh, yes, Chuck, we do. I love you. I am still here. Staying._

ooOoo

As Sarah left Castle, Chuck returned to the Buy More. Sarah had parked in front of the Orange Orange, so she went out through the shop. As she neared her Porsche, she heard her name. "Sarah!"

Sarah spun to find herself face-to-face with Ellie. And Ellie's eyes were full of tears. Before Sarah could ask, Ellie had her arms around Sarah's neck, squeezing her, and Sarah felt sobs. Ellie whispered into Sarah's ear. _Bachelor party. Devon. So drunk. Cheap hairspray. Tall blonde. Photographs. Looking for Chuck. Couldn't find him at home. Came back. Jeff and Lester. Jeff and Lester?_

Sarah was unprepared for all this. She had just gotten her reprieve from Beckman. She needed to go back to her apartment, unpack, sit and look out the window. Quiet herself and all the chaos of emotion inside her.

But she and Ellie had steadily grown closer.

The last few weeks, especially after Sarah's revelation recently, Sarah had taken opportunities to talk to Ellie when she found them, instead of escaping them as she often had in the past. Ellie's intensity was hard for Sarah to equal when lying to her. And almost everything Ellie believed about Sarah was a lie.

Except for one crucial, recent thing: Sarah had always known could see Sarah's feelings for Chuck. Sarah managed to keep Ellie from complete certainty, maybe, but she was not able to keep her guessing as she had kept Chuck guessing - as she kept herself guessing. That had always made her extra nervous around Ellie. But now that Sarah knew her own heart, she was less anxious about that. Not because she planned to share her revelation with Ellie, but because she felt like they nonetheless shared a secret, or had, as it were, joint possession of one. It was as close to sharing a big secret with a girlfriend as Sarah had managed since high school with Gale.

"It's okay, Ellie," Sarah offered softly, her hand rubbing Ellie's shoulders. "There must be some kind of mistake. Devon loves you." Sarah was not just trying to make Ellie feel better. Devon was utterly devoted to Ellie.

 _What the hell did Forrest do? Why did she do it?_

Ellie pulled back and wiped at her eyes. "What am I supposed to do, Sarah? How could Devon do that? I know... _guys_...behave like that at bachelor parties, some guys, but not mine. Why would _Chuck_ let that happen…I need to talk to him."

Sarah put her hands on Ellie's shoulders and looked her in the eye. "I'm sure there's some explanation, Ellie...We are talking about Devon and Chuck...There's a story, I'm sure. They wouldn't just...Devon wouldn't. Chuck wouldn't let him…"

Sarah was not sure how to continue. She was sure there was a story but she did not know what it was. She and Chuck had had no time to talk in private at all yet, not since he thought she was leaving.

Ellie squeezed her fists, waving them in the air. "His keycard. Now I know how he lost it...Who knows what else he lost at that party..."

 _Keycard?_ And then Sarah could see the outlines, if not the details, of what had happened. _Forrest. Access_. The government has screwed ( _wrong term, Sarah_ ) Chuck again - and now it had reached out to include Ellie and Devon. To put their relationship in danger.

Sarah could think of no immediate fix for this. She let Ellie ramble and vent. She listened. She hugged her a couple of times more. Stymied twice in a few days - unable to know what to do about Chuck, unable to know what to do about Ellie and Devon.

 _Damn Forrest. What was Beckman thinking? But maybe Forrest was Beckman's Waterloo, or her Gettysburg - the beginning of the end. Who knew that Chuck could get her to agree to what she had agreed to, to allowing their feelings for each other?_

"Ellie, look; I'm really sorry. I haven't had a chance to talk to Chuck much in the last few days," when Ellie looked newly upset, Sarah quickly added, "no, no problem, just...work stuff. But just remember, really, things aren't always what they seem. And sometimes, when a person doesn't explain something, that does not mean there is not a good explanation. It just may not be the right time, or their explanation to give or..."

Ellie gave her a bitter smirk. "Or it's complicated."

Sarah dropped her head. _Damn._

 _Yes. It is complicated. This is all so complicated. Family is always complicated, but when Chuck and I are both lying…_

Sarah looked up and made herself smile. "Right, Ellie, _complicated_. Sometimes...things just are, despite our wanting them to be simple. Sometimes the simplest things get trapped inside the most complicated things…"

Ellie sniffled, then actually grinned thinly. "I defer to you on this, Sarah, since no one seems to understand complicated better than you…" Ellie's grin weakened more, but she held it long enough to make sure Sarah understood that Ellie was not upset with her.

 _Complicated. You have no idea, Ellie. I was about to drive away from my life with no real strategy for a return._

Sarah hugged her again. She could not fix this. She was not sure Chuck could either. The photographs were real, despite being misleading. No explaining them away without giving themselves away. She and Chuck would just have to be supportive and hope Ellie and Devon could find their way past it. What Ellie and Devon had was real. Sarah believed in it. She thought they would make it, devoutly hoped they would. She was so tired of lying, so tired of pulling everyone around her into lies, so tired of lies consuming truths.

ooOoo.

Later Chuck showed up at Sarah's apartment, frustrated with what has happened, frustrated with the after-effects of Forrest's visit, frustrated with Sarah, too. She had left with no word. Or he thought she had.

She gave him the note she had brought back for him, making sure he knew that she had come back to deliver it. _I didn't leave you, Chuck. Not for good. I can't leave you for good._

 _Only for bad._

ooOoo

They drove together to find Chuck's dad. On the way there, though she did not look at him or say anything about it, Sarah held Chuck's hand. For his sake. For hers. She could feel his hand warm in hers and she knew that she had nearly lost this. Chuck did not press her. He just squeezed her hand gently.

When they found the isolated silver travel trailer, they thought no one was there, no one home. Chuck's disappointment was palpable. It was disappointment for himself, but more disappointment for Ellie. Finding their dad might not erase the Devon/Forrest pictures, but it might help Ellie turn her mind from them. And it would grant her a fond wish. Sarah shared Chuck's disappointment. Sarah reached out and caressed Chuck's neck, much as she had back when Carina came to town.

And then the door to the travel trailer opened, and Sarah met Orion, Chuck's father, creator of the man she loved and author the trap she and Chuck were in.

* * *

The next few weeks were ridiculous, crazy. Orion was a little crazy. Suspicious of Sarah and bent on making Chuck suspicious of her too. There was something deep and personal in Orion's suspicions but Sarah could not figure it out. She had no run in with him in the past; there was no particular reason for him to be quite as suspicious of her as he was.

But events unfolded as they often did around Chuck. Ted Roark, of Roark Enterprises, turned out to be Fulcrum and up to his neck in the Intersect. Orion managed to get himself captured. In order to find him, Jill came back into their world. _Joy, joy_. And Chuck, predictably, let Jill get away at the end, after she helped Chuck and gave Chuck information about where to find his father. Chuck's act of mercy created a disaster for him, for Sarah.

Beckman went ballistic. Furious about the failure to rescue Orion, and even more furious, panicked, really, about Jill being on the loose, knowing as much as she did about Chuck. Casey, joking, suggested bunkering Chuck. Beckman seized on the idea. Sarah was ordered to bring Chuck to Castle. Casey would tranq him and he would be moved to a bunker. Sarah tried to object, but Beckman ran over her. She had her orders. She started toward the Buy More.

ooOoo

Sarah had heard of the Green Mile, the green floor walked by inmates in a Louisiana prison as they headed for execution. Sarah walked her version of the Green Mile, Buy More green.

What was she going to do? This was not like the 49B.

Chuck was in imminent danger, or it was reasonable to believe so. He faced the bunker. This was not asking him to run simply to be with her. He also was desperate with worry about his father's safety. He would go with her. Run. But could she do it?

This was the sticking place, the worries at the mud bath. Could she take the leap? Vault out of her world and into a new world? Screw her courage to the sticking place and take flight? Leap?

She had no love for the spy world, for the spy life. But love - or not - was not the question. She was not struggling between loves, her love for the spy life and her love for Chuck. This was not a "Career vs. guy?" question, not of the normal sort, torn between the same order of attractions. No, this was a choice between knowledge and ignorance, between the familiar and the unknown, between skill and clumsiness, between power and powerlessness.

Her entire life had been the creation of someone else - her father, Graham. She had not been in charge of herself, directed her own steps. True, inside cons, at least when she got a little older, and inside missions, once Graham made her his Enforcer, she had latitude, could make her own decisions. But the larger course and shape of her life had not been hers to determine. She was free, to the limited extent she was, only within narrow horizons.

But if she did what she was thinking of doing, if she disobeyed Beckman and ran with Chuck, took him to find his father and perhaps to win his freedom from the Intersect, she would be outside the structures that had defined her life. No con game of Dad's, no mission of Graham's (or Beckman's). Just Sarah. And Chuck.

Chuck would not dictate to her, direct her. He would hope to be with her. He would let her know his opinion. But he would respect her freedom. Respect her. He really always had. He believed in her. From the beginning (for no better reason than that she asked) he trusted her. Not instrumentally, to do this or that, get from point A to point B. Or not just that. He just trusted her. Full stop. He loved her.

Could she face that freedom, that trust, that love, in a world, in a life, she did not know? A world she had surveilled, watched, only seen, observed, never really been fully involved in?

A world where her skills and habits were not only mostly no use, but would often be burdens, distractions, disqualifications, embarrassments?

She would not enter that new world ahead of the curve, but behind it. She began to be afraid. Could she live...truly? Live without lies? Shed all covers and be...a woman - not a spy - in love?

She got to Chuck in the Buy More. She started to follow her orders ( _My God, what am I doing?_ ), to do what Beckman told her to do. Her habits took over, her fear shut her heart away from her lips. Automated. Distanced her heart from her lips. Agent Walker spoke. And Chuck thanked her. He trusted her again. Right then, right there. "Trust me, Chuck."

She leaped. Leaped.

She reversed course, sent Agent Walker away. She took Chuck. She chose Chuck. She took her guy and they ran.

* * *

To Barstow.

And it should have happened.

Making love. It absolutely should have happened.

But it didn't. Still, Chuck knew how much she wanted it. To make love. Or, she hoped he did. She hoped he had seen it in her eyes. She had not told him ( _of course not_ ) but she prayed he had felt it rising from her in heatwaves of loving desire.

She had not made love to Chuck but she hoped...he understood. What it meant, her reaction in that bed. That it was not a one-time thing, that it was a beginning. Their beginning. But she never got a chance find out if he understood before they went to save Chuck's dad. Before they did save his dad, and before his dad managed to remove the Intersect.

Removed it. Gone.

And just like that, the life she had known for two years was gone. And freedom, real freedom, not just sort-of-freedom, yawned before her.

An abyss of freedom.

A real future.

Real.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time as S2 ends. Chapter 34, "Imperfect Execution (Part Two): Decisions, Decisions".

Broken Heart is annoying. So often, the failures of the show are failures of accent - by which I mean the accent mark gets put in the wrong place. Sarah is turned into a supporting character in an episode that should have been squarely focused on her. Instead, the focus is on displaying Forrest (Tricia Helfer). I guess I get that from a ratings point of view, but it is a shame that we are given so little insight into Sarah's heartbreak, so little of her in the episode.


	34. Imperfect Execution (Two)

**A/N1** S2 really ends with Colonel. The Ring is the fitful start of S3. Fitful. Fitting, I guess.

This chapter is really a coda to S2 and a kind of intro to S3.

There are two salient facts in Ring. (1) Sarah decides to leave the spy life and (2) Chuck decides to (re)enter it. Chuck does (2) knowing (1). Almost everything else is a tying-up of loose ends, an assemblage of put-off plot points jammed together all at once.

This chapter mixes the first- and third-personal presentations of Sarah's POV. I've been setting up this possibility for a while. So, hang on. As I have in a few previous chapters, I deliberately write Sarah into incoherence in spots here, but I see no way around it. She is about to leap, and at a certain point, she just has to do so, and there is no explanation that bridges the gap (or it would not be a leap).

I haven't worked the Sarah/Agent Walker dichotomy too hard in the story. I have made use of other dichotomizing devices, more formal ones. But it gets a bit of a run here before it disappears until S4.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

 _Imperfect Execution (Part Two)_ :

 _Decisions, Decisions_

* * *

You got a hole inside your heart  
Bigger than what you could ever hide  
And people stop and look right through  
Saying something must have torn you, just torn you apart  
And in the morning you get dressed  
You put your makeup on and wait for something to change  
'cause the day you stop trying, well that's the day you start dying

Look out, look out  
Your dreams are dripping down your soul like alcohol  
You better pick 'em up real quick  
You better make something o' this

'cause you're not here to sing anybody else's goddamn dream  
No, you're not here to sing anybody else's goddamn dream

\- Nico Stai, _Like Alcohol_

* * *

I hate me. Why can't I want what I want?

I read once about a fish - I don't remember the kind, but it was a fish that ate other fish - a fish that they put in a tank with prey fish. But they also put a glass divider in the tank, transparently walling it off from its prey fish. The fish swam into it over and over, trying to get to the prey fish. Always separated. Eventually, the fish stopped swimming into the divider. They took it out and the fish starved to death, all the while its prey fish were swimming around it, near it, up against it.

Me. Glass dividers. Separated from what I want, what I need for so long, I cannot get myself to take it.

I can't believe it's possible. Or I don't know how it's possible. Or... _something_.

 _I hate me._

* * *

For real.

She met Chuck to go to the rehearsal dinner. He took her arm, ran his hand down it to her hand.

Real.

Sarah was alive with excitement. A night with Chuck. No Intersect, no cover. Just the two of them.

Real.

She felt dizzy.

Agoraphobia. A fear of...the open, of openness.

Not just a fear of open spaces, though, a fear of open _time_ , of open life. Her life had been closed for so long. Shuttered. Blinded. Cloaked. Daggered. She had been closed for so long. Now, she no longer had to be closed. But could she be open? She felt exposed, vulnerable, uncovered.

Since the change in their circumstances, the closest she had gotten to open with Chuck was a comment about a hypothetical shared bunker. Chuck had imagined two beds. Sarah's comment in reply was a question: "Two beds?" Even then, she had not been able to own Barstow, although she was not trying to take it back, walk it back. Even then, she had closed herself behind a question mark. She wanted him to know what it meant but did not know how to make it known. It meant so much the meaning overwhelmed her when she tried to speak it.

They should have made love that night. But the festivities ran long into the night, and they were both exhausted from everything that had happened. They never discussed it but they decided to wait. Mutually. Unspoken agreement.

There would be time.

* * *

And now Bryce is back. And he wants me to leave. And he has been working with Orion, with Stephen, from back in the time he was rogue. They seem to trust each other to some extent.

Beckman offers Chuck an analyst position. My heart goes in two directions at once.

We can be together!

I do not have to choose, I do not have to leave the spy world, the safety of the spy world. _There, that phrase, 'the safety of the spy world'. I am officially upside-down._

But Chuck would not be a spy; we could meet at...the edge...of the spy world, find a place there. A liminal place, a place at the limits.

A place of limits, still.

We would still be enshadowed.

I would still be enshadowed, cornered. I want out of the shadows, the corners, despite being afraid of the light, the open. But Chuck has not asked me what I wanted. ( _Why would he? When have I ever told him?_ )

We would be together but not really real.

Beckman gives me new orders. The re-assignment that has been hanging over my head for so long falls. I am to go with Bryce. To Zurich. _Perfect. Absolutely fucking perfec_ t. I should say no. Immediately. I try. I try to find my voice. To say what I want. But as always, my old automatism takes hold. I have taken orders all my life.

But I can say no to this. I can stay. I do not want to go with Bryce. I just have to want what I want. Get my heart into my lips. _Speak, Sarah! Goddamn it, girl, speak!_ I sound like Carina in my head. But I take the order. I do not speak.

I cannot stop walking the Green Mile, despite not being in the Buy More.

How can I take this order after last night? In the face of all that's now real. All that I want. How?

Because a part of me wants to take the order. A small part, one that has been growing smaller the entire time I have been in Burbank. But it is not gone and it has an old authority over me, an old command. It is the part of me that has been willing to live in bondage, willing to take orders, the part of me that does not believe in me, the part of me that does not trust me. _Agent Walker_. She wants to live. To live her life, the life she understands.

She might cooperate with quantitative changes, changes of degree. A less enshadowed life: she might be willing to live that. But she has a bizarre photophobia, a sensitivity to light. She does not want to step into the light, to be lit up. Agoraphobia. Photophobia. She is a creature of corners and shadows. She will not make a qualitative change, a change of kind. That would be her death knell. She wants to live.

My father created her. I know that now. I helped. Neither of us knew what we were doing. My father and I created her. But Graham named her. Graham hardened her. Perfected her. Con games were the start, but the CIA had been Agent Walker's finishing school.

I take Beckman's goddamn orders. Agent Walker nods. She is alive.

* * *

 _I hate me._

 _"_ Going with Bryce."

Sarah stood with her heart pooled at her feet and watched Chuck shrink as he walked away.

"Good for the cover." _Damn me._

Chuck had just asked her to go on vacation. He wanted to be with her. And she not only said no, she told him she was going to leave and go _with Bryce_. Maybe she was finally obeying Graham's kill order from their very first date, because...Chuck's face...she had killed him.

Why?

Fear. The prospect of being with Chuck outside the spy life. No Intersect. No handler/asset structure. Just two people in love. That sounded more frightening than any mission she had ever been given by Graham, no matter how hopeless. Agent Walker was not willing.

But it was not just that. It was Chuck too. Or so said Agent Walker. Or Sarah. She was losing track? Who was losing track? Of whom? Me of me. I hate me.

A _vacation?_ Did he really not understand? She had gone on vacation with Bryce. _Disaster_. She had been asked on vacation by Barker. _Pass_. She did not want _a vacation_ with Chuck - she wanted a life. And yes it scared her, well, scared her _shitless,_ no punches pulled. But that was what she wanted. She didn't want to just take a break, pause her spy life, and be sort of with Chuck, waiting to see what came next. That was what she had on vacation with Bryce and would have had with Barker. No.

And...And... And when he came to ask her, Sarah honestly thought he going to propose. Tell her he loved her and he was done with spying and he wanted her to be done too. She wanted to be done too. He just needed to ask. _Maybe_. She wanted him to ask. She would say yes. _Probably_. She wanted him to, despite the terror of it. _Marriage_. All the marbles. The prize she had been playing for. A life, a normal life, with the man she loved. If she could just manage to want what she wanted. Glass divider. Agent Walker. Daddy's darlin' little lyin' angel...Graham's nightmare Enforcer.

And instead, he offered her a vacation, umbrella drinks. That would have been a fine honeymoon. But 'vacation' when she thought she would hear 'marry'? It sounded like a proposition, not a proposal. She wanted to give up the spy life, not take time off.

Why was she reacting like this?

She knew it was unfair to Chuck. _Be fair to Chuck. - Shut up, Jill._ But if Chuck thought she was going to remain a spy, why did he turn down Beckman's offer?

They could have been together. But as it was, by turning down the offer, and by asking her to go on vacation, it was like they were back at the damned fountain, like he was envisioning the life he told her then would not work, would not be really real. Why would he do that? He did not want that. What was he thinking?

Sarah forced herself to breathe. She knew they were both confused. They were hurting each other inadvertently. _Same song, different verse._ They needed to talk.

She knew what he was thinking. _That she was not sure_. _That she was not ready._ _That she would not leave the spy life for him_. He had not proposed because he thought she would run. And, given her current spiritual scramble, he was not wrong to pick up on indecision. It must be rolling off her, waves of ambiguity.

But she had decided. She just could not decide to own the decision. She was like a delayed-action resolution machine.

" _Step right up, folks, and watch it dysfunction! Resolves today. Acts tomorrow or later, always after the resolution can matter. An amazing machine. Useless except for creating angst. A machine for our time. A perverse automaton! Step right up, folks, but careful… not too close. I once knew a man who got his heart jammed in it…"_

* * *

Roarke attacked. The wedding was destroyed.

* * *

They survived it.

Chuck used his back pay to create a new wedding. Sarah and Casey helped.

But Sarah said nothing because she was not sure what there was to say. She had orders. She did not want to take them. She was not going to take them. Agent Walker was going to take them. _Stop me, Chuck! Stop her, Chuck!_

But Chuck seemed to have no fight left. Sarah had snapped him and he did not snap back. At the moment when he thought they would be together, he finished second to Bryce. She had seen the thought in his eyes when he made the bitter comment about the cover.

" _Always. I always finish second to Bryce. I will never be enough for you, never win you."_ Her heart pooled around her feet. Chuck walked away. She was frozen in Chuck's pain, paralyzed in her own indecision.

* * *

During the ceremony, it happened. No warning. It just happened. She caught up with herself. She came to herself. She wanted what she wanted. Wanted it with the full weight of her life.

Watching Ellie and Devon get married, and watching Chuck participate, and participating herself, Sarah felt a shift. Felt a fundamental change. It did not happen at that moment; it had happened long ago. She came to know it had happened at that moment. But she was the last to know these things, always. " _The last person to know anything about you is you." - Carina, long ago._

Bryce was in her ear, asking her to come with him, and he must have read the realization on her face. She was in love with Chuck. She was staying. She would leave the spy life. Despite the automatisms of the past few weeks, she already had. She just had not known it. She let Bryce know she was not going.

The agoraphobia left her, the photophobia. She stood on the open beach, her toes in the sand, squinting in the bright sunlight, looking across the aisle at the man she loved. And she chose him. She stepped out of the corners and out of the shadows and into her new world. A new creature.

She really did.

For real.

Agent Walker resigned.

For real.

For the first time, Sarah embraced the future she had been in all along, ever since she arrived in Burbank.

The end had been fitful, unnecessarily dramatic and confusing. _Not a surprise._ But the end had come. The gifted con child and the deadly assassin became a woman in love. Afraid, dazzled, barefoot...but ready.

For real.

It was not too late.

But it was; it would prove to be. She just did not know it yet.

* * *

 **A/N2** Uh, so, yeah. Gird your loins. Next time, Chapter 35, "Back on the Chain Gang (Part One): Our Station and Its Duties".

S3. The Slough of Despond. I am reducing it to two stories, each multi-chapter. I do not plan to extend the misery beyond necessity.


	35. Back on the Chain Gang (One)

**A/N1** As was true in S2, Sarah will choose her own path through the events of S3, looking for meaningful patterns. She will struggle.

S3 is a jumble. There are things to be said for the basic conceptual structure of the season, reasons why some such series of events is necessary to the show. But I am not now going to engage in any apologetics, even of a limited sort. I will say a bit about the season as we go forward.

Brace yourselves. Here we go. By the way, all my epigraphs matter to the relevant chapters and often to the entire story. But this one perhaps more than any in the story so far.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

 _Back on the Chain Gang (Part One)_ :

Our Station and Its Duties

* * *

I found a picture of you, oh oh oh oh  
What hijacked my world that night  
To a place in the past  
We've been cast out of? Oh oh oh oh  
Now we're back in the fight

We're back on the train  
Oh, back on the chain gang

A circumstance beyond our control, oh oh oh oh  
The phone, the TV and the news of the world  
Got in the house like a pigeon from hell, oh oh oh oh  
Threw sand in our eyes and descended like flies

Put us back on the train  
Oh, back on the chain gang

The powers that be  
That force us to live like we do  
Bring me to my knees  
When I see what they've done to you  
But I'll die as I stand here today  
Knowing that deep in my heart  
They'll fall to ruin one day  
For making us part

I found a picture of you, oh oh oh oh  
Those were the happiest days of my life  
Like a break in the battle was your part, oh oh oh oh  
In the wretched life of a lonely heart

Now we're back on the train  
Oh, back on the chain gang

\- The Pretenders, _Back on the Chain Gang_

* * *

Shaw rolled off of Sarah. Finished. She was too. Finished.

Shaw rolled back on his side, looking at her. She turned her face a bit toward him. He was looking at her, but as he smiled, she saw his eyes shift subtly. His gaze did not waver, but it refocused on something behind him. Behind him. Not in the penthouse bedroom, but in his past. Someone behind him. His wife.

The sex had been attentive. Shaw had been slow, tried to be tender. To make it special; it was their first time. There was no way he could make it special. He kept seeing someone else. And so did she. Someone behind her. On a train platform. In a train yard. A spy who should not be a spy. Chuck. He had been hers. No longer. She loved him. No longer. _God, I love him so much._

Shaw rolled over, perhaps so he could look at the someone he was seeing without fear that Sarah would see him do it. She was glad he did. She turned her face to the blank ceiling.

They lay there, silent, for a time. Then she heard Shaw's breathing even out. She reached up and took out the earrings. They were lovely. She had seen them in jewelers window and said so. Shaw bought them and made them a present. But she had been given a present before, out of love, and she knew what it felt like. Shaw's present was in lieu of love. Maybe he hoped it would be followed by love.

The earrings were not a bracelet. They were not charmed. She put them down carefully on the night table. She got up slowly, hoping to let Shaw sleep. He moved but did not awaken. After finishing in the bathroom, she walked past the clump of his clothes on the floor to the clump of her own and grabbed her blouse and her panties. She slipped both on and walked into the darkened living room. She crossed to an armchair and sat down. Her suitcase, unopened, was beside it.

She opened it and grabbed a t-shirt and pajama bottoms. She felt like she needed a shower if she was going to be able to sleep. _I won't sleep._ Her suitcase fell open as she put the clothes on the chair beside her.

A photograph's corner was exposed by the fall. It was in the small pocket inside her suitcase. She had known it was there but she had not been able to take it out. Not even after the Red Test. Not even knowing where she was going and what she was likely to do once she was there. What she had just finished doing. Shaw expected it. They were going to be a team. Partners. What point was there in waiting any longer? She had been waiting for years, waiting for Chuck. But that was never going to happen. That was over. She waited in vain. Waited for...she looked around herself at the penthouse, its decor so Shaw, so not Chuck...waited for _this._ She had been empty often in her life. Never before had she been emptied like this. Nothing inside her. Nothing left. Just... _this._ It would have to do. She would have to make it do. The story of her life. She had perfect in her grasp, and it slipped.

She could not stop her hand. She reached out and took the photograph from the pocket. She and Chuck together. A rare non-cover moment in their damned ubiquitous cover life. Together. She had put the photograph in her suitcase the day of their first really real date, when they thought Chuck was no longer the only Intersect and they thought she would be re-assigned. She was going to take it with her, no matter where they sent her. She was going to try to get back to him, somehow. Back to Chuck. And if she could not, at least she would have a reminder. A reminder that someone loved her and that she had loved someone.

Somehow, that situation on the really real date seemed far less hopeless than this one. Far, far less hopeless.

The photograph made it hard for her to breathe. It hijacked her heart, her hopes, her everything. It ruined her.

She put her head in her hands. She sobbed silently. This now, this here, this was her life. This man, Shaw, this expensive penthouse, his dead, and her loss.

After the Red Test, Shaw asked her about Chuck: "Do you still love him?"

Bryce had said something like that to her, declarative, not interrogative, about himself. "You still love me." But she did not, because she had never loved Bryce.

She was sure about that now. She had been in love for real. She was in love for real. Still. Still in love. So much in love. And sleeping with another man, planning a new life with another man. A man she did not love, not at all, although she tried not to dwell on it. Although she had tried to convince herself and would keep trying. She liked him. She respected him. He was a talented spy. She felt for him, his grief over his wife. He was handsome - and noble, maybe, after a fashion.

There was a lot to like. Perhaps there was a lot about Shaw to love and perhaps his wife had loved it all. But Sarah did not. Love it. Love him. She _liked_ him. But she meant _liked_. There was no hidden depth to the word, as there had been when she used it with Chuck. No trust of the sort she had with Chuck. Nothing of the sort she had with Chuck. Nothing. No love.

All she felt was a wrenching sadness she could not let Shaw see. Well, there was one other thing she felt, but it was there and then gone. When Shaw had been undressing Sarah, there was a fleeting moment when she felt a desire for revenge, revenge against Chuck, revenge for Hannah, and maybe for Jill too. Revenge for Prague. She had waited for Chuck. Waited and waited.

No, no, that wasn't entirely fair. Fair. _Be fair to Chuck_. Circumstances beyond their control had been unfair to both of them. This was no one's fault.

She was skipping over a lot of time, skipping over the collection of small cuts as she moved to the mortal blow.

How did it start? Where did it all go wrong?

Prague. Before Prague, but it came to a head in Prague.

* * *

Sarah saw what was happening to Chuck. The way that Beckman and others, Casey too, were giving him a version of what she had heard at the Farm, 'the Greater Good', 'uniquely qualified', 'duty', 'heroism', 'self-denial'. She could see it affecting Chuck, weakening his anchorage in what mattered, in what made him Chuck. It was a bill of goods, and Sarah knew it from her own experience. She had no Intersect, but Graham had coveted her, done everything he could to bend her to his will. Beckman was now doing the same thing to Chuck, only with more urgency, because of the Intersect, because she wanted to control it, control Chuck. It was seduction - but via enticements of power and uniqueness, not anything erotic or romantic.

Beckman seemed to be doing her best to limit Sarah's access to Chuck. Beckman wanted to control all the voices in Chuck's ear. She really wanted only hers there. Beckman did not know Sarah had planned to quit, to start a new life with Chuck, but the little General was good at angles. She seemed to sense Sarah's disquiet with the whole situation.

Sarah finally got a chance to talk to Chuck, getting him away from scientists and probes and plans for training. But she only had a moment. She tried to explain what she feared, and she asked him to run. He agreed. She gave him the essence of her plan. They were taking him to Prague for training. She needed time to make plans, gather money and IDs. She would meet him at the train station and they would go.

What Beckman was planning was worse than bunkering Chuck. A more fundamental wrong. They were planning to ruin him, to turn him into a weapon, some kind of super spy. They would not ruin him all at once. He was Chuck; he would not let them. But they would ruin him by slow degrees, one bitter compromise at a time, until they destroyed his promise, spoiled his character.

Sarah had not gotten to talk to him about that awful day, the day Bryce died and Chuck downloaded the new Intersect. The day he downloaded more than information, the day he downloaded skills. The day he became exponentially more valuable to Beckman. He had done what he had done because he was Chuck - he had done it out of an impulse similar to the one that kept him from staying in the car. A larger version of that impulse. But she knew that there was still time to undo what Beckman was doing. There was still time to prevent Chuck's ruination.

The problem was that it would take time. She had to let Beckman start the training. There was no preventing that; she had to run the risk, let Chuck run it, before they could run together, away from that risk, to a life together somewhere.

She began working toward their disappearance the very moment after Chuck agreed, feverish in her hurry. She made herself be deliberate enough to insure that she made no error. She used all her skills, training. Called in every safe favor. Prepared once, then twice, then three times. Then started over. She made list after list. She made lists of lists. Her planning made her Enforcer planning look careless, slovenly.

They would be subject to a manhunt that dwarfed anything Sarah had ever known, she knew that. Beckman would not lose Chuck. She would do everything in her power to find them. Chuck was the most valuable intelligence asset the US government had, and so the most valuable intelligence asset in the world. Others, like the Ring, would chase them too. It was a desperate plan, really. But Sarah was desperate. She was in love and she was going to protect Chuck. Not for the US government, but from the US government. She would not let them have her guy.

* * *

Sarah slipped out of Burbank undetected. Casey did not suspect. Beckman was in Prague with Chuck. Sarah switched IDs, credit cards, paperwork, everything. She got on a plane. She was not flying directly to Prague. She was flying to Belgrade. She would take a train, trains, actually, to Prague. Everything Sarah could do by way of preparing was done. All she could do was sit back and try to enjoy the flight.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the wedding rings she had pilfered from Castle, the same ones she and Chuck had worn as the Carmichael's. The same man's ring she had demanded back from him when Beckman told her the honeymoon was over. A pointed grin spread on Sarah's lips. The cover she had created for them was a cover as a married couple. _The honeymoon is not over, General. It is about to begin._ It was silly, and she knew it, but she found the thought of Chuck wearing that ring deeply pleasurable. The marriage would be a cover, but there would be something real beneath it. They would be neither the Andersons nor the Carmichaels. They would be Sarah and Chuck. Together for real beneath the cover.

She closed her eyes. She was so excited that she had to hug herself. The plan was dangerous. Maybe they would not make it. But she was good at this, the best, and Chuck was the Intersect. They would not be easy to run to ground. Not easy at all. Sarah's lips curled into a dangerous smile, a silent, defiant challenge to anyone who would hunt them. She had been who she had been, Ice Queen and Enforcer; they had finished and hardened her; they would contend with what they had made. No one would take Chuck from her.

She boarded the train and sat by the window, watching the countryside go by. She had checked everything again. She had revisited the plan; she had gone through the lists. Her mind drifted to her suitcase, to the selection of undergarments she had packed after carefully choosing them. They had been waiting so long. On top was the lilac lingerie she had worn to Chuck's room, just before the kiss. Not the Incident. Not a mistake. The kiss. She allowed herself to daydream of Chuck's hands on her, caressing her through the lilac lingerie, lifting it, to reveal what she had wanted to show him for so long. She felt a tremor run outward through her, from her deep center, all the way to the tips of her fingers, her toes. She felt as alive as she had ever been. _Chuck. Soon, Chuck, soon. The waiting will be over. We will be real._

When she got to Prague at last, it was early in the day. She checked into a small hotel. She stowed her baggage, chuckling to herself at the word 'baggage' when she said it internally. She spent the day moving into and out of the train station, checking exits, sight lines, memorizing its details. She hoped none of it was necessary, but it was possible that Beckman would have Chuck under surveillance. Sarah had no idea what the protocols were for Chuck leaving the training area. She believed he would be able to get to her; Beckman would not want to circumscribe Chuck's freedom during the early days of his training. She would need to keep him enthusiastic, happy, focused. Sarah was confident Chuck would be able to make their rendezvous. They would take the train from Prague into the countryside. Through a series of blinds, Sarah had rented a small farm near the German border. The important thing was to stop moving as quickly as possible. Let Beckman chase anything that moved while they were still.

The family who owned the farm lived spent the summer in Leipzig. _Leipzig. No hurry to visit there again._ Sarah had no personal contact with them. She had been able to get them to stock the farm before the left. Perishables were to be delivered there today. They would be able to stay there for weeks, Sarah hoped, while other parts of her plan were put into effect. But she would worry about that later. She closed her eyes and imagined the farm, long days with nothing to do but attend to each other, to be and to become _them._

She looked at her watch. It would be time soon. She needed to gather the baggage. She got to the hotel and retrieved it, leaving money on the nightstand to cover the cost of the room. She had used a one-time ID to rent it. The car that brought her from the station was still waiting, and she put the baggage in it. When they arrived, she paid the driver and walked the baggage inside. She had the tickets in her hand. She looked at her watch. She looked at the map she had with her, just in case. She looked at the large clock on the station wall.

It was time.

And there stood Chuck, looking at her.

Her intuition jarred her. He looked _different_. He started toward her. He looks like…

He looks like…

He looks like Bryce.

He looks like a spy. Oh, no. No.

He reached her. Kissed her. A cover kiss. She heard her own voice, disbelief.

"That is not the kiss I was expecting."

He started to talk, spiraling, his tone sickeningly like her own tone of the early days in Burbank, when she explained to him why things were as they were, and why he would have to accept them. His tone was not unkind. But she had come to hear him whisper in her ear, to hear sweet nothings, not to hear him say nothing, sweetly. He was explaining but her head was full of the sound of her blood, her panic. A roar of pain and disbelief. She heard and did not hear.

And then he left her at the station.

She stood there, dazed, for a long time.

She checked her watch. She checked her map. She checked the large clock on the station wall. He had not arrived yet. It was all a mistake.

But it was no mistake. He had refused to run. She had leaped again and no one was there to catch her.

She fell for the next several hours, days. Fell on the plane. Fell in her Burbank apartment. Fell. No one knew she had gone. No one knew she had fallen. Except for the man who let her fall. She was still falling. She was falling in Shaw's bed.

* * *

Sarah looked down at the photograph. She wiped her eyes. She heard Shaw stir, then he was in the living room with her. She had put the photograph back in its place. She would have to keep Shaw from seeing it. One day she would throw it away. But that day was not today.

Shaw stood looking at her and her open suitcase. He had on his robe. Red. He blinked as if he had not quite expected to see what he saw, to see her.

"Getting ready to head back to Burbank?"

She nodded.

"We will head back tomorrow. We'll finish up there and then we can come back here for good." He gestured at the penthouse. "I hope you like it."

Sarah looked around at it again. Shaw expected her to say something. "It's nice."

He seemed pleased. "I'm going back to bed. Join me?"

Sarah shook her head. "No, not yet. But soon."

Shaw smiled and shrugged and went back into the bedroom.

Sarah took the photograph out again. Shaw's robe made her think of Chuck's Red Test. Prague had been the beginning, but the Red Test was the end.

But she was getting ahead of herself again.

* * *

Chuck's training in Prague was a failure. He came back, disgraced. He had tried to contact her over and over, but she was not going to open herself to him again. They were done. She had a new mission, a seduction mission ( _oh, yes, of course_ ) with Casey and a team as a backup, and a skimpy bikini she kept on but put to effective use.

But Chuck showed up, insinuated himself into the mission.

Sarah's anger, her pain, made her crazed. All she wanted to do was to hurt Chuck, to return pain for pain. He kept trying to explain but she would not listen, would not hear. She just would not hear. She hit him. She wanted to hit him and hit him and hit him.

* * *

She sighed. She put the photograph away and tiptoed toward the bedroom. Shaw was asleep again. Relieved, she got a shower, dressed in the t-shirt and pajama bottoms, and slipped carefully under the covers.

Under the covers. That's where she belonged. It is where she would live and, undoubtedly, die.

She stared at the ceiling. Chuck was a spy. She was sleeping with Shaw.

Graham was dead; Sarah had changed.

But Sarah's life had closed around her again, tighter than ever, imprisoning her in solitary confinement with Shaw: she was back on the chain gang. She had been since Chuck downloaded the new Intersect.

 _The universe hates me. How do you know when the universe hates you?_

 _When it lets you love something and then requires you to give it up._

 _No, not just to give it up._

 _To oversee its destruction._

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for Chapter 36, "Back on the Chain Gang (Part Two): Castaway, Adrift".

(What a no-fun chapter to write. I wrote a paragraph, played that Pretender's song on my guitar, then wrote another paragraph, then played that song….)

I head to Barcelona in about ten days. I am hoping to get the story to Paris before I go.


	36. Back on the Chain Gang (Two)

**A/N1** It is a datum of S3 that Sarah has no real romantic feelings for Shaw. A part of her wishes she did, just so that the pain of what is happening to her and around her could be lessened, or she could escape from it. _Ditto_ , with the necessary changes, Chuck for Hannah. Much of the darkness of S3 comes from this, from watching Sarah and Chuck misunderstand and betray themselves and their deepest hopes, even if we (sort of) understand how and why it happens.

One nice bit of storytelling irony presents itself, though: Chuck ends up with the woman (Hannah) who seems exactly the woman (everyone thinks) he should have, yet it is clear he is _settling_ for her; Sarah ends up with the man who seems exactly the man (everyone thinks) she should have, yet it is clear she is _settling_ for him. (I mentioned this about Sarah and Shaw quite a few chapters back.) That irony does not make watching Sarah and Chuck date Shaw and Hannah easier; it makes it worse. But it is a nice bit of storytelling irony. It throws an interesting light backward onto Lou, Bryce, Jill, and Barker, too.

Sarah's mind is adrift in this chapter, and the reader has no choice but to drift with her. I want to capture her confusions, her obsessions (repetitions), her mental automatisms, her guilt. A complicated, jumpy chapter.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

 _Back on the Chain Gang (Part Two)_ :

 _Castaways, Adrift_

* * *

Leave the road and memorize  
This life that pass before my eyes

Nothing is going my way

There's no one left to take the lead  
But I tell you and you can see  
We're closer now than light years to go

Pick up here and chase the ride  
The river empties to the tide  
Fall into the ocean

The river to the ocean goes  
A fortune for the undertow  
None of this is going my way

There is nothing left to throw  
Of ginger, lemon, indigo  
Coriander stem and rose of hay

Strength and courage overrides  
The privileged and weary eyes  
Of river poet search naivete  
Pick up here and chase the ride  
The river empties to the tide

All of this is coming your way

\- REM, _Find the River_

* * *

Canto 1: Stream of Consciousness

* * *

Sarah stared at the ceiling. Shaw slept.

She was having trouble telling herself the story of how she ended up where she was. Scenes, jumbled. Words, coming back, random. Not making sense. Nothing making sense.

 _I was required to oversee the destruction of the man I loved. Love._

Sarah's mind drifted, her heart beaten thin and cold, carpaccio in her chest. She might have scorned the image if it were not apt.

Adrift. Castaway.

* * *

Pain oscillating with numbness.

Anger oscillating with terror.

 _My new life in Burbank. After Prague._

ooOoo

Beckman reconstituted the team.

Sarah was given a new assignment. She was no longer Chuck's handler, exactly, she was more his teacher, his trainer. She was to teach him how to control the Intersect.

The miserable irony was not lost on Sarah: she absorbed the full measure of the misery, took the full force of the irony. She was to teach Chuck to distance himself from his emotions, or, better yet from Beckman's point of view, she was to teach him not to feel, or not to feel what he felt. Sarah was going to teach him to be her.

She was going to teach him to stop loving her. It was what he signed up for, what he wanted.

ooOoo

Bo sticks. Training. Unspoken misery on both sides. So much pain, so little talk.

"I don't want to hurt you, Sarah."

"You can't."

Sarah had intended that as her final word. Parthian shot. Words, not stick. She thought they would part, go to their respective corners of Castle. But they did not.

They both stopped and turned. They looked at each other, eyes wary. They had hardly spoken in days except in professional terms, mission terms. They made eye contact and held it the first time since Prague. It seemed that way to Sarah, anyway. She felt herself retreat behind her eyes, her consciousness retreating even as her feet held their ground.

Chuck's brown eyes swamped her. They were full, full of so many things. Brimming. _This is why I have avoided them._ Chuck was not Sarah. He was not wired like she was. To distance him from his emotions would not be to enlarge a space already there, it would be to rend him in two. He was whole, one. Or he had been before she came and introduced covers and distance into his life: before she broke him, mangled his realometer.

 _You didn't. Or you didn't mean to._

 _\- No, but I seduced him into all of this, not intentionally, not on purpose, but I did it as surely as if Graham or Beckman had ordered it. My not seducing him made me all the more seductive._

 _\- I did not know what he would become, the new Intersect, the power he would have, but I primed him for them. I made him love me and in doing so, made him want this life. He wanted to be enough for me, enough in the spy world. He was so much more than enough. He was everything._

She could see the love in his eyes, a gunshot to her chest. _I can't bear it. I can't return it. He rejected me. He chose this life. Spies don't fall in love, Chuck._

"Well," she almost barked the word at him, "is there something you need to say?"

She saw his gaze grow more complicated; she saw him struggling with his feelings for her. She had been telling him - to control his emotions. Telling him hat he needed to learn to feel nothing or to ignore what he felt. She had actually said it to him a few days before, not just thought it, God help her: "Spies don't fall in love."

She was her dad teaching her. She should have just called Chuck 'Darlin''; the effect would have been complete.

She was Graham manipulating her, making sure she took no time to allow her emotions to register, to steer her. "Feel nothing." That was her message to Chuck. "Move on."

And she was trying to embody it, show him how to do it, changed though she was, miserably in love though she was. _I am not in love with you. I have no feelings. I feel nothing I feel. I love you._

"Sarah, I...we...we need to talk. We've always needed to talk. Please talk to me. I have to explain. My explanation in... Prague...That went all wrong."

"Don't trouble yourself, Chuck. I made a mistake. I won't make that mistake again. Ever. We don't need to talk. We never need to talk. There is nothing to talk about." _Except that I love you and I miss you every moment, especially when we are together. That's when I am most alone. I can't take refuge in memory or dreams; the reality is too awful._

The agony on his face.

 _Forgive me, I can't stop. I am hurting so much. Beckman has you now. This is what you want. I don't have you. I never had you, not really. I was too late._

"Sarah, it's just that I feel…"

"Stop! No feelings, Chuck. Stop feeling things! Casey is right: you are a lemon, a waste of perfectly good Intersect download."

Sarah stormed away. She went to a dark part of Castle and cried. He could hurt her. It did not matter what she claimed. He could. He did. All the time. She had made sure he knew she could hurt him.

The anger drained out of her after that.

ooOoo

She still had to train him, though. Ruin him. She had feared Beckman would do it before. That was why she wanted them to run. But they had not run. Now, she got to do it, ruin him, for Beckman. And she was going to have to do it without the help of anger.

She felt cold, reptilian. A creeping thing. Cold-blooded.

ooOoo

Carina came to town. The team helped her with her mission. Carina tried to help Sarah. She tried various stratagems to open Sarah up. At Sarah's she zeroed in on the charm bracelet, hidden by Sarah from casual sight, and Carina lingered over it, deliberately insulted it - trying to force a response from Sarah.

Sarah had no real hope to fool Carina. But she had some hopes to fool herself, to blunt the edge of her own unhappiness by denying it. Deny. Deny. Self-denial, my one indulgence.

At the end of the mission, Carina gave Sarah a thumb drive. On it was a video of Chuck as he tried to explain to Sarah. He had been in a vault, succumbing to gas. But he gave her the answer to the question that terrified her: _Why? His answer, short version, was that he did it out of love for her._

Chuck choose the spy life because he felt like he had to help, that the power the Intersect gave him created an obligation. Sarah knew Chuck: she knew that was true. But she also knew something else. That from the beginning, he had harbored the suspicion that he was not enough for her, that she needed...more...than he could give her. When she told him at the wedding she was going to leave with Bryce, she saw him lose again in his own mind, saw him embrace himself as a loser.

Had he chosen to become a spy hoping to be enough for her? Had that been part of what motivated him? Had he done the thing that destroyed them partly out of hope to create them?

Whatever Sarah's view of the spy life, she was supremely good at it. She was supremely competent and knew it. Chuck never knew how she really felt about that life.

Over time, he had some of his assumptions about her life taken from him. He knew that her childhood had been...difficult. That high school had been too. He knew that she was not good at relationships. And although she had never admitted it to him, she thought he knew that Bryce was the one relationship of her past. But he also knew how highly Casey thought of her. He knew a little about her work for Graham.

The new Intersect gave Chuck a chance to prove himself - to her, before anyone else. He obviously feared that even if she chose him, she would be _settling_. That had been a subtext of that awful fountain conversation. She did not believe that. Never had. Not for a minute. No matter what Carina or Bryce thought. If anything, she thought he would be the one settling - settling for a pollutant, for someone who had no rightful place in his life.

But all her reversals, her vacillations, her doubts, her automatisms, all her attempts to hide what she felt from him and from cameras, bugs and eyes, all that had predictably made him feel like she did not rate him highly enough for there to be a future between them, or to feel like she chose him, if she chose him, by...default or pity or something. Her doubt that he could play a part, pretend, if she told him how she really felt almost certainly seemed to Chuck as general doubt about him. Chuck wanted to be a spy because he wanted to help, and because he had the power to help - but also because he wanted to be with her, with her the way he thought Bryce was or Barker would have been: on equal footing. Side-by-side, not walking a few steps behind her. Equal.

She had tried to make it clear to him over and over, to praise him. He was a hero. A genuine hero. Whether it made him a spy or not, being the Intersect was the job he was born to do - a job he never asked for but performed beautifully. Still, she knew those moments of praise were isolated moments in months of ambiguous silence, hard to bank on, undermined by the suspicion that she might have praised him in order to handle him.

It was all so absurd. If it were not her life, she would have laughed. Bitterly. But she was too deep in the absurdity now to laugh, bitterly or no. The first time he downloaded the Intersect, he had been (like Sarah) a conscriptee. But this time, he downloaded the Intersect voluntarily. He chose to become a spy and had put himself in the spy life. And although she was miserable, she could not leave. She could not leave him. If becoming a spy was what he wanted, she loved him too much to say no.

They might have made it through it all somehow, all the paradoxes, pain and Prague, but Shaw showed up. There had eventually been...moments...suggestions that there might still be some way forward. And then Shaw.

* * *

Sarah needed to think more about Shaw and about her, about their relationship. About the fact that she was in his bed.

 _What am I doing here?_

* * *

But at the moment...At the moment, she was thinking about Shaw and Chuck, and their relationship. Shaw displaced Sarah as Chuck's teacher. Part of her was glad about that. Part of her was not. Because Shaw was there to make Chuck a cookie-cutter spy, like Shaw himself. A good spy, but Shaw was not going to give Chuck room to find his own way. Worse, Chuck was star-struck. Had he not had the history with Bryce that he did, Chuck might have reacted to Bryce like that. (Maybe he did, a little.) He had reacted to Barker like that. Shaw was the poster boy for what Chuck believed he needed to become, what Beckman wanted, what Casey (damn him) reinforced. _A real spy._ Why could Chuck not hear - a _real_ spy is an _unreal_ human being? Shaw was a golem. A fundamentally inanimate thing made animate by magic. Locomotive mud. She could see it. How could Chuck miss it? Hell, Casey could see it.

But Chuck could not. He responded to Shaw. Shaw knew how to push Chuck's buttons, maybe his old frat boy buttons. Shaw knew how to egg him on, how to play on his desire to be more, to be equal to Shaw. Slowly, Shaw began to create compromises, to find situations in which Chuck had to do something that the Chuck she spent two years protecting, two years loving, would not have done. Shaw undermined her influence with Chuck, suggesting that her worries were really her doubts about his abilities.

Chuck became someone she hardly knew, step by alienating step. He became darker. He burned an asset. He began to drink - serious, self-medicating drinking, alone. And when Hannah came into his life ( _I will think about that in a minute, don't want to think about that here, now, in Shaw's bed)_ , he began to treat her as he accused Sarah sometimes of having treated him. He started handling Hannah, despite the fact that he was in a relationship with her. He lied to her face. He twisted the truth. He misrepresented himself. He seemed to view that mistreatment as a matter of course, as Shaw did. Hannah was a civilian. Duping her was permitted. Chuck was willing to be with her falsely, undercover, keeping her in ignorance. Shaw allowed it, did not suggest that Chuck should stop seeing Hannah or doing whatever it was Chuck was doing. For two years, Chuck fought for real with Sarah. Now, he was happy with lies with Hannah.

It nearly killed Sarah. _Hannah._

And she _had_ transitioned to Hannah, to thinking of Hannah, she realized. Hannah was the start of Shaw for Sarah, or as close to the start as she could pinpoint. Sarah had softened toward Shaw when she found out about his wife. She knew something about being driven forward as a spy by guilt, by pain, by remorse. But that change had not led her to his bed. Hannah had done that.

Hannah was Lou - but on steroids. Steroidally normal. Steroidally perfect for Chuck. Brunette. Techie. Smart. Verbal. Small, petite, lovely. But it was not just the fact of Hannah, the fact that Chuck slept with her. That was awful, a knife to a heart not long healed from Jill. But if Sarah had thought Chuck was going to be happy with Hannah, that they would have the sort of relationship Sarah had longed to give Chuck but never could, Sarah would have sucked it up and went on. Nursed her broken heart but wished Chuck and Hannah the best. _I would still have hated her, a little, more than a little, forever._

But that was not what was happening. No, Chuck was handling Hannah, not dating her. He could not seem to tell the difference. He was lying, constantly, to Hannah. The man who broke up with Sarah because their cover story was a lie was lying to Hannah. She was his asset, not his girlfriend. To lose Chuck to Hannah was one thing. To watch him sleep with his asset - that was indescribably painful.

 _Be fair to Chuck._ It was true that Chuck did not understand his relationship with Hannah in those terms, but as he had often told Sarah, understanding a relationship in certain terms did not mean those terms accurately described the relationship. Functionally, in terms of what was really going on, Chuck slept with an asset - that should have become clearer to him when Hannah ended up swept into a mission.

 _Be fair to Chuck._

 _\- I am trying, Jill, but…_

But, by his own lights, Chuck was not being fair to Hannah or to himself. _Maybe the handler/asset charge is too strong but how would it have looked to Chuck if it had been someone else doing what he did?_

 _Here's what hurts the most._

 _Yes, Chuck slept with Hannah. That hurt. It still hurts. But he slept with her when he was in love with me - and when he knew he was not in love with her. Somehow, that hurts the most. Jill, at least, confused him, made him revisit old feelings. And I don't mean Chuck did not like Hannah - he did - but he did not love her, he did not really ever believe they would be real. That they had a future. I know, because I know what he looks like when he wants something to be real. He settled for a fake. Slept with her under his cover._

Sarah gave up at that point. Shaw had been pushing, making it obvious that he wanted her, wanted something with her. She began to yield.

* * *

 _And that brings me to Shaw. I am doing what Chuck did. It would kill Chuck to know it. Why am I here? In the bed of a man I know I do not love and never expect to love - all the while in love with someone else? I am doing what Chuck did._

 _Sleeping with someone when I am in love with someone else._

 _Why the hell am I here?_

 _The shorter answer is because this is all, this is what, I deserve. This is my relationship with Bryce again, worse, since I know what to expect._

 _Worse, because we have a corpse along for the ride. Shaw's wife. Three's company._

 _But there's a longer answer and it starts with my real name._

 _And it starts with my settling for fake, too._

* * *

Canto 2: Brackish Backwaters

* * *

 _Chuck was with Hannah, apparently satisfied with that, with a relationship of lies. The kind he would not have with me._

Shaw kept pushing on Sarah, attempting to woo her. Locomotive mud. But attractive. She did not like him. Not at the beginning. But, after a little while, she came to feel for him, for his grief. It matched her grief for Chuck. Shaw had lost the person he loved. Sarah was losing the person she loved.

She had wanted to run with Chuck. He had run from her. She was running from him. She never ran to Shaw; she only ran from Chuck. Given the straits of her life, that meant she ran into Shaw.

But from the first, it was not what she wanted. Despite her attempts to tell herself it was. Hannah had what Sarah wanted, or the hollow version of that Chuck was willing to settle for. Sarah had what she always had. Nothing. Less than nothing. Less than zero.

Shaw kept pushing. It was hard, being at less than zero. Eventually, she started to yield. But as they went along, no change for the better occurred. Shaw wanted to sleep with her, she knew, and she realized that would likely happen if she allowed this to go on, but she also knew it would just be a change in their relationship, not progress, not an achievement of intimacy, bare, but not a baring. Sarah had no sense of what Shaw might have been like with his wife, but grief and the job had made him incapable of intimacy. Knowing that, she let things go on, because she was hurting so much, because she was willing to do almost anything to make it stop. She knew, deep down, although, as usual, she tried not to know it, that Shaw was not her romantic choice. She pretended that he was. He was instead a coping mechanism. But she tried to make him more, tried one time. A desperate measure.

She had kept virtually everything about herself from Chuck for so long, and yet he managed to know her. She realized that the reason they had both managed for so long with the awful cover dating was that the cover never kept them from becoming intimate with one another. They had not become physically intimate. _(One day, Morgan Grimes, a reckoning…_ ) But still intimate, deeply intimate despite the cover. Neither of them had realized it fully, but they were friends and lovers, lovers in almost every sense.

Intimate.

For Chuck, knowing about her dislike of olives or her love of pickles was not just two items on an information checklist, it was a secret he shared with her. They had shared secrets together, kisses, touches, little comments. Like a reverse magician, Chuck had managed to make Sarah _appear_ \- when her whole life she had disappeared. She had appeared and, without knowing it, had grown intimate with Chuck. That intimacy became symbolized by the charm bracelet, affirmed by it. For all its sufferings and frustrations and sadnesses, her cover/real relationship with Chuck had been suffused with warmth and closeness. She loved it, loved the time they spent together. The charm bracelet was suffused with that warmth and closeness.

Sarah missed that so much. She had never had it before. She now knew she would never have it again. Whatever became of this thing with Shaw (Sarah knew there was no long-term future in it, Shaw was all about the past), the spy life would kill intimacy, hunt it down and terminate it. What she had with Chuck was a miracle, a fire that burned despite being starved of oxygen. There was no fire with Shaw. No intimacy.

So Sarah tried to create intimacy, to work the sort of magic for herself that Chuck had worked for her. The charm bracelet gave her the idea, sadly. Chuck gave her something intensely personal, something absolutely real, something she could not falsify (even if she hid it from herself now in the back of her jewelry case, unable to touch it, but unable to bear the thought of parting with it). She had thought maybe she could fake it until she made it. But that was not working. She needed a stronger magic. Time with Shaw distracted her thoughts to an extent, but her heart was never there, found nothing in him. So she made a decision. She would create intimacy between them, give her heart something.

She told Shaw her name. Sam. The oldest charm on the almost-bare bracelet of Sarah's life, a charm known only to her father and her mother.

Since Sarah had come to Burbank, she had been learning the logic of gifts. Chuck understood that logic as intuitively as Sarah understood the spy life. She had been learning from him. So she gave Shaw a gift, a kind of charm, meant to charm them into something more than it seemed they could have. Alchemy _via_ a secret word, power in a name. Shaw's acceptance of the gift was not ungracious, but it was not like Sarah's acceptance of the charm bracelet.

It was like he had been given socks he needed for Christmas. He was thankful but the moment was not deeply special for him. Had she told him her high school locker combination, he might have reacted in much the same way. What had been intended to enspell them, to create intimacy between them, turned into a reminder of the lack of intimacy they shared. There was no enchanting what they had. It would always be... _different_ from what she had with Chuck. She accepted it. Rearranged her compartments. Terminated her expectations.

And because the universe hated her, Chuck overheard the entire conversation. She created no intimacy with Shaw; she hurt Chuck instead. _My life._ He had asked for her middle name and she had not really given it to him. Shaw had not asked and she gave him her name. What had been a desperate ploy to conjure intimacy with Shaw turned into a betrayal of her intimacy with Chuck. Another implicit rejection of him.

There was no way to make it right. It just went on the baggage pile of wrong that Sarah pulled behind her daily. Chuck was with Hannah. She was with Shaw.

The shitshow was the shitshow.

Still, there had been a moment...

It was during Chuck's testing, on a stakeout, when she thought they might escape from the shit-show and find each other again. Sarah felt a heartbeat of hope...

But then the everything turned Red.

* * *

Sarah wanted to blame the whole shit-show on Chuck. On his desire to be a spy. But she blamed herself for that desire.

She had polluted him, pulled him toward the spy life in her attempts to stay near him.

Shaw made her give Chuck the news that he was not yet an agent, made her oversee the Red Test. _Why the hell did I not walk away?_ Chuck thought they were going out, a date to Traxx, to celebrate his having become an agent, to maybe finally put the past behind them and work toward a future.

 _Why did I go? Why did I dress up, like we were going to really do what he thought?_

She put him in an impossible position. He was so happy, so full of hope; he had emerged from the dark. He thought he was an agent. He thought the handler/asset, teacher/student structures were gone. He did not know that a worse one had taken their place, fully and finally: corruptor/corrupted.

The structure of our destiny. We have reached it at last.

* * *

I snake the gun across the table, apple in the Garden. Everything now Red. I calmly explain the situation to Chuck.

 _See, Chuck? A real spy feels nothing or does not feel what she feels. If you do this, it will rend you._

 _Why did I dress up? What am I celebrating?_

 _Seductress, against my intentions. Snake._

He takes the gun. _Knowledge of good and evil_. He understands now. If he does not kill the mole, he is finished as a spy, and we will never be together, not as he wants - as equals. _We are equals, Chuck, please don't want this more than you want me. No, forget me. Don't want this more than you want you. Don't want this more than I want you. Choose yourself, Chuck. I am your ruination. Serpent. Snake. Temptress. Why did I dress up?_

Chuck holds the gun the way that perhaps Eve held the apple. The Red Test is power, knowledge. _Be like God. Good and Evil. Life and Death._

The past had been on my mind. Sam. My past. My Red Test. The woman I killed...executed...whose name I still do not know. The beginning of my days as Enforcer.

I have no future to consider. Shaw is a movement back in time. The future I want is trying to decide if he will kill...execute...the mole. Kill himself. Kill me. _I dressed up for my funeral. For Chuck's funeral. Funerals, his and hers. For the funeral of the woman I executed._

If he does kill the mole, we will not be together. _I could not live with my handiwork_. I could not bear to see it. I make sure his choice is as awful as possible. I make sure he knows he is going to lose me if he executes the mole, and I know he believes he will lose me if he doesn't - we will never be together as he wants. Never be equals. I damn him both ways. Because I have always been his damnation.

I made him want me. I made him want this.

 _Damn me._

 _\- Too late._

 _\- Shut up, Jill._

I thought Jill was the serpent at the bosom, but my feeling of kinship with her in Castle was right: serpents both.

 _You do not have to do this, Chuck. For once, be like me in just this one respect: Don't want what you want. Forget being a spy. Be Chuck. That is all I ever wanted you to be. There is nothing for you to prove to me. But I did this. I want you to be Chuck and I want you to be with me and I can't have both and now you are living my paradox._

 _I see it in his eyes. This is now about him proving something to himself too. He wants to succeed. He has felt like a loser for so long, and I made that feeling so much worse._

He takes the apple. The gun. I leave him to my fate.

ooOoo

I get to the scene after the gunshot. I look to see the mole, dead. Chuck stands, gun in hand. I realize that I have switched places with him. I am where he was when I shot Mauser. He is where I was. I had no idea when I killed Mauser it would lead us here. The gunshot then echoed the gunshot now, the one still echoing in the trainyard. Or maybe it was the other way around. Or maybe they were both echoes of the gunshot in Paris, my Red Test.

Chuck stands over the mole's corpse.

Smoke from the gunshot wreaths him, a garland of loss.

Chuck is a spy.

Chuck is me.

I am Corruption.

We are cast out of the Garden

* * *

Sarah noticed that the sun had risen. The dawn was pale, gray. The pale grayness had filled the penthouse bedroom as her mind drifted.

She wiped her eyes and got up. She went to the bathroom and washed up, brushed her teeth. Back in the living room, she took clothes from her suitcase and dressed standing there.

She pulled an armchair close to a window and sat staring out, vaguely in the direction of Langley, far away, invisible, yet omnipresent.

She heard Shaw get up, heard the shower start. She went to the kitchen and made coffee. If she was going to live there, she needed to know where things were.

She was drinking hers when Shaw came out, dressed. He had his suitcase, pulling it behind him. She gave him a cup of coffee and they shared a quick kiss.

"Morning, Sam." Her heart sank. She wished she had never told him that. But she could not take it back and he would undoubtedly go on using it in private, not knowing that each time he did, he was cursing her.

She made herself smile. "Morning, Shaw."

He smiled. He liked her use of his last name. Professional. _The Andersons. I am in Nod, East of Eden._

He sipped his coffee then put the cup down. He saw her suitcase standing in the living room where she put it when they arrived. "Ready for Burbank? Ready to end one chapter and start a new one?"

Sarah's heart closed her throat, so she only nodded.

* * *

 **A/N2** Does all that Sarah thinks make sense? Is she being fair to Chuck, to herself? No, but give our heroine a break. It's been a shitty few months. My interest is in her attempts to make sense, her attempts to be fair, in what they show about her, not in their ultimate success. She will see through some of them soon with a little help from the man she loves. Things are about to turn. She's reached the bottom of the Valley of the Shadow of Death and is about to climb out.

Tune in next time for Chapter 37, "Back on the Chain Gang (Part Three): Appearance and Reality". This has been dark. Sunny dawn is coming.


	37. Back on the Chain Gang (Three)

**A/N1** Let me begin by thanking folks for hanging in there. You've taken a leap of faith across almost 200K words. An old-fashioned word that I like, 'long-suffering', seems an appropriate description: you've been long-suffering. I've put us through the wringer. Thank you.

As Sarah thinks often enough in this story for it to be something of a refrain, _we should have seen it coming._ In the pilot, she told Chuck - and the viewers - that she had a lot of baggage. Chuck volunteered himself as her baggage handler, not knowing how much or what kind of baggage she had. One of the most beautiful and tragic features of human life is our power to promise ourselves beyond what we know, foresee. (Love: friendship, marriage, parenthood.) And, despite what we come to know, our power sometimes to keep those promises.

Chuck's promise is sorely tested. The promise Sarah makes in response - the promise she effectively makes when she asks him to trust her - is also sorely tested. But the trial is almost over.

I opened my _Chuck_ book by pointing out that two intertwined _Bildungsromans_ compose the show, the story of two people in the midst of great changes, and changing as they do largely because of each other. That is another of the beautiful and tragic features of human life, our power to change and to be changed by others. The people we know form crucial parts of us and of our destinies. To deny that is to live in a fantasy of independence, to fail to know that human beings are, as Aristotle rightly declared, _social animals._ (Anyone who lives alone (independent), he says, is either a beast or a god.)

Sarah and Chuck walk each other to the brink, and then they stop, pull each other back (with a little help from a friend). They save each other, and they go on saving each other through the rest of the show.

After restructuring and abstracting away from many episode details, I return to some here, mostly those of American Hero but some of Other Guy. So, this one starts rough, but, well, you know how it ends...

We are through the bulk of the story sequence. There is one final story in S3, two stories coming for S4, one for S5, and two post-finale stories.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

 _Back on the Chain Gang (Part Three)_ :

 _Appearance and Reality_

* * *

Faith is limited to that ideal region where, apart from faith, doubt is possible. [Faith's] positive essence lies in the overcoming or prevention of doubt, actual or possible, as to an idea. And the doubt further...must be excluded in a way which cannot in the ordinary sense be called logical. The non-logical overcoming from within of doubt as to an idea, or the similar prevention of such doubt, appears, so far, to be the general essence of faith.

\- F. H. Bradley, " _Faith", Essays in Truth and Reality_

* * *

Faithless?

* * *

Shaw and I fly back to Burbank. He is lost in files on the Ring, reading, re-reading, turning the wedding ring he is not wearing on his finger, but that he imagines is there.

I don't know what I am doing here, with him, except that I have nowhere else to be. I start trying to do what I do. Compartmentalize. I start trying to find a way to compartmentalize Chuck, Burbank. Ellie and Devon. The family I almost had. I need to put them behind me, a past mission. Close the file. New mission. Mission. DC. Shaw.

The one time Shaw looks at me, I give him my best smile. I have to move the muscles. But maybe if I keep doing it, over time it will seem spontaneous to me.

We get back to Burbank, back to Castle. In the time we have been gone, Chuck has left me message after message on my phone. I deleted each without listening to it. I can't forget him if I take his messages.

I am with Shaw now. Last night, whatever might be said about it, was me committing to being with him, body if not soul. This, this is what I signed on for. He is a good spy. That will have to be enough. It should be - I am nothing but a spy myself. What more am I offering him than he is offering me? A perfect match.

ooOoo

Chuck finds me in Castle. He is going to be sent on assignment to Rome. He gets to pick his team. He wants me.

He wants me.

What is he thinking? Doesn't he know what I have done, can't he guess? What the time in DC meant?

Even stranger, how can he seem so much like Chuck? Doesn't he know what he had done? _I feel lost suddenly, dizzy, gyroscope malfunction. What is happening? How can Chuck be...Chuck?_

I know this man. Chuck frets over switching from peppermint to spearmint toothpaste. How can he gun a man down in cold blood and then focus only on a glamorous-sounding assignment? In my worst Enforcer days, moving fast and feeling nothing, I never managed this, this lack of reaction. _What the hell?_

I tell him I cannot go. He does not understand. How can he not understand? I tell him.

"I saw you kill the mole." I am cold all over. Flinty. If he won't react to it, I will. I will force him to acknowledge what he has done. _Kill, Chuck, you killed a man._

He stalls. I see thoughts, feelings flash in his eyes. Reluctance. _What are you reluctant about, Chuck? Admitting that you killed the mole to me, or to yourself? You are no longer you. Even if you seem like you._

But he does not do what I expect. Instead of trying to justify killing the mole, he makes a distinction. "I know what you think you saw." Think _I saw. Think? I saw him kill the mole. Didn't I?_

Shaw comes in, forces himself into the conversation, forces us apart. I am too angry and confused to stand there. I leave.

 _What is Chuck playing at? Can he suddenly lie this perfectly? A killer and a liar? He did not seem like he was lying. But I saw what I saw, my version of what he saw in the Christmas tree lot._

 _...Except I didn't see what he saw. He saw me pull the trigger. I saw him standing over a dead man. I heard the shot but I did not see it. I am a spy. I know that appearance and reality not always identical. God, how I know that! But there is no other explanation._

 _Doubts fill me. Doubts about Chuck. Doubts about my own eyes._

I push it from my mind. Shaw is taking me out tonight, a date. It is now time for me to be with him. My new life. Shaw's...partner. I make myself stop thinking about Chuck, glass dividers in place. We go out. I try to enjoy the evening. _Cope, Sarah_. Shaw is my rebound, my ricochet. I suppose I am his.

The restaurant, I tell him, is nice. He corrects me. It is perfect. I keep my smile in place, but that word is no longer mine to use. Still, I am going to make this work. The last few weeks have been so dark. I have made my decision. I focus on the meal, on Shaw, and I push other things from my mind.

I killed Chuck. I ruined him. A termination mission I did not know I had accepted until he pulled the trigger. The mission is done. Chuck is done. Terminated. New mission. Mission. Shaw. No more Chuck. No more comparisons. Nice. This is nice.

This will never be what I could have had with Chuck, but it what it is.

It will have to be enough. I need to stop thinking about Chuck. Maybe I can.

I can't because when Shaw gets up to take a call, Chuck joins me at the table. When I see him, my half-real, half-fake mood, the one I was in for Shaw, the one I was trying to make real, deflates. I feel my shoulders sag, my expression shift. He affects me like no one else ever has.

And right now, he is making me angry. Anger terror. I hide the terror.

 _Let me go, Chuck! It is over. You killed the mole. I ruined you. My work here is done, God help me. Let me pick up the shards and glue them into something livable. Shaw can't help me cope if you keep forcing comparisons with you._

I snap at him. "What are you doing here?"

Here's here for me.

 _But I have told him. He doesn't get to have me._

I respond. "What do you want me to say?"

 _That has always been the question between us and I have always known the answer: He wants me to say 'I love you, Chuck'. Even if I didn't know, or wouldn't admit the answer was true until my mudbath. It is still true. I love you, Chuck.,_

My anger intensifies. The pain is coming back. Everything I pushed away rises again. _Why isn't he more upset? Could he be telling me the truth? Doubts._

He says he will do anything to get me to go to Rome.

 _Then do this._ "Tell me what happened at the tracks!"

Again, he stalls. Why? _What are you thinking, Chuck, what are you so reluctant to tell me? He is genuinely reluctant. I know him and I know his reluctance. I know how often over three years he has given me this look, reluctant to say or do something for fear of my reaction - or non-reaction._

He finally admits that he is keeping a secret. _A secret?_ He does not want there to be any secrets between us. Neither do I. I don't want anything between us. This table, these clothes, nothing. I want him naked against me, me naked against him. _Stop. Stop, Sarah._

But I don't understand. What is the secret?

Before I can ask, he changes tack. He tells me that he is still the same guy I met at the Buy More that first day. As I look at him, he must see the question marks in my eyes. The man seated across from me, beautiful in his suit, nervous still, but now assured in his manner beneath the nervousness, _this_ is not the man I met at the Buy More. This is Chuck. The same, but different.

And then Chuck agrees, reading my mind. He tells me that he is not that guy anymore, because that guy hated himself for not knowing what he wanted to do with his life and who he wanted to spend it with. But now he does. He wants to be a spy and he wants to be with me.

 _But that can't happen. If you are a spy, you don't get to be with me. Because I would look at you every day and see that guy at the Buy More, and I would miss him, and he would be gone because of me. Enforcer terminated._

Why does he insist that this is possible? Us, together. He killed the mole, didn't he? _He loves me. He wants to spend his life with me._ What is the secret, Chuck?

And then Captain Awesome tackles Shaw through the restaurant window, glass shatters, and our talk ends. My half-and-half mood has shattered too and I ask Shaw to take me to my apartment. He sees that I am upset, knows I have talked to Chuck, and takes me there. We say goodnight outside the building.

ooOoo

The next day, Shaw's wife puts in an appearance. Eve. That's her name. He told me weeks ago. Since she is around, I guess I should call her by name.

Eve. How had I missed that? I've been thinking about the Garden. Castaways. And Shaw's wife was Eve. I try not to let that thought take me any place.

I expect Shaw to be upset about last night but Beckman's briefing about the Ring has his full attention. He hardly sees me. Beckman suggests a plan, perfectly workmanlike and workable. But it is not radical enough for Shaw. He volunteers for a suicide mission. That's crazy. I try to get Beckman to see it. Get Shaw to see it. But he only sees her. Eve. That's when I know she has put in an appearance. She is here, with him. He is with her. He is willing to die to get revenge. I don't love him but this is crazy. I try to stop him. Beckman agrees to the plan. _What is he thinking? What is Beckman thinking?_

He makes it plain to me when I question him. He will die to kill the man who killed his wife. He puts the plan into action. I keep trying to stop him; he grabs me and kisses me. It is a goodbye kiss, a final kiss. I return it. What can I do?

I lose Chuck and this is what I get. A man lost in his own past. I am a corpse's understudy. Eve, dead, means more to him than me, alive. _Three's not company; three's a crowd._ I am moved by his self-sacrifice, but…this is crazy.

Chuck shows up. I explain. I am still moved by Shaw's willingness to sacrifice himself, by the finality of that kiss. The craziness of it all. I decide I cannot let Shaw do this alone. He is part of my team. And what has happened between us has happened. I can't let him sacrifice himself. I try to locate him so that I can follow.

Chuck locks me in Castle. I don't understand. He is going to go to help Shaw. I ask him why he would help Shaw. I am with Shaw. Chuck said he would do anything to get me back. But now he is saving Shaw for me. Giving me up.

 _I am completely confused. This is Chuck the spy. But he is still acting like Chuck, my Chuck. The look he gives me when he tells me he is saving Shaw because he knows how much I care for Shaw..._

 _Shaw went after the Ring for the sake of a dead woman. Chuck went after Shaw for the sake of a live one, me, the one he wants but is willing to give up, since he thinks that is what she wants, what I want. He leaves._

I manage to get Casey to come to Castle and free me. I go after Shaw - and Chuck. I tell it to Casey as if it is Shaw I am after. I tell myself that too, but I know better.

I arrive too late. The airstrike occurs. A hellish fireball erupts. But out of the fireball emerges Chuck, Shaw over his shoulder. Chuck, wreathed in smoke, a garland of victory. And I know, I know, who I was terrified for when the explosion occurred.

 _Chuck_. But I don't know what to do about it. I have done what I have done. Made the choices I have made. He killed the mole.

What kind of a spy is Chuck Bartowski? What is the secret? Why won't he tell me? Why can't I understand? Why won't it come into focus? Doubts nag me. I saw what I saw. Chuck, gun, smoke, dead mole. But my doubt struggles against my relief for Chuck. How can I doubt him when I am so relieved? Doubt is possible, yes, but is it necessary? This _is_ Chuck. Somehow different, somehow the same. I knew this before, at the stakeout, but I let it slip from me during the Red Test, in all my upsurge of despair, pain and self-loathing.

And then Chuck comes into Castle and he puts his heart on the line again. He tells me he loves me. He says it four times. Four. I know because I feel each one. Each is a jolt of electricity to my system, like the shock administered to a patient whose heart has stopped. He tells me we are perfect for each other. Perfect. That word. _Shaw used that word. Last night with Shaw was nice. It was not, it could not have been, perfect_.

I unknowingly reversed the structure of my shooting of Mauser when I saw Chuck and the mole... _but I did not actually_ see _him kill the mole..._ now Chuck knowingly reverses the structure of Prague: he asks me to run with him, to just go, to be together. He reverses the structure as a gesture, a profound apology for Prague. He will here run my risk there. He is asking me to go, not to go on a vacation, to go on...a life. To spend our lives together. I have waited for these words for three years.

 _I balk. I did not expect this. I am unprepared. He still has a secret. I don't know what happened at the tracks. I don't see how there could be another explanation. But he is so sure and he is so unaffected by what would have affected him._

 _And he saved Shaw for me. He was the hero, Chuck was the hero. I slept with Shaw. Still, I can leave Shaw but Beckman expects...No, stop. Enough of expectations, orders. What the hell do I care what Beckman expects? Chuck asks if he can kiss me._ _I do not say so but he sees permission in my eyes._

The kiss is not the kiss before the bomb. It is not the kiss goaded on by Roan Montgomery. Chuck has changed. It is the kiss of a man who knows who and what he wants. It is a hello kiss. The first time I am kissed by Chuck the spy.

 _What kind of spy is Chuck Bartowski? He says Shaw would have done the same for him. Is that true? I am not sure. I doubt it. Shaw was willing to crater Castle with Chuck inside when the Ring agents found it. Perhaps Shaw's nobility was just his single-minded pursuit of revenge? What Chuck did for me, whatever else is true, I know that was noble. I know that he meant it when he told me four times that he loves me. He put my desires ahead of his own, even when he believed satisfying mine would have destroyed his._

 _Shaw slept with me then abandoned me for the sake of revenge. I don't know what to make of that, exactly, but I know which of the men put me first. Whatever kind of spy Chuck Bartowski is, it is not the same kind that Shaw is, that Bryce was, that I used to be._

 _Maybe he can be spy and Chuck too, my Chuck. Maybe I am not his corruptor. Maybe he can still handle my baggage. Maybe he already has, a lot of it, anyway. Maybe there is something else for us to be. Lovers, friends, and lovers, but lovers in every sense of the term this time._

 _He will wait for me at the train station as I waited for him. He did not try to convince me. He is taking a leap of faith, overcoming his doubts. He knows I may choose Shaw. He will let me choose._

I go home and start to pack. I am not going to DC. I am going to run. I start putting my things together. I look at the picture on my nightstand. The picture of us - of me and Chuck - the same one I have in my suitcase and that I have never been able to put away, despite the past months of misery. The one I looked at in DC. _Lovers._ I pack in the light of that thought.

My doubts have been overcome. Excluded. I do not know how it is possible that Chuck did not kill the mole. But I believe it. I believe in him. Is it logical? I don't know: probably not: I don't care. But logic has not overcome my doubts. Love has. Chuck has. _I love him and I have never stopped and he loves me and he said it four times and we are running away together_. I pack to the rhythm of that ridiculous run-on sentence. Saying it to myself over and over. Chuck has an endless capacity to get me to leap. .

And then Casey shows up. He is going to plead Chuck's case, I think. But I have faith now; Chuck does not need his case pleaded. I am choosing by faith and not by sight. But Casey is not here to plead; he is here to put me in the know. He does, and I am transported from faith to knowledge. The darkling glass is shattered; there is no more possible doubt to overcome: Casey killed the mole. Not Chuck. Casey saved Chuck and then he saved me, he saved Chuck and me, saved _us_.

My apartment lights the city.

I light the city despite the daylight.

I am a sun, huge, alight, ablaze. I warm worlds. The universe spins around me.

I was going to leap. I was leaping. Now I know. My heart leaps in sheer joy. He is Chuck. He is a spy - some kind of spy - and he is still my Chuck. And we are going to leave Burbank together. Leave the spy life behind. He would rather be with me than be a spy. I made that same decision months ago. Finally. Finally. Chuck and Sarah. Sarah and Chuck.

I take my gun out of my bag and throw it on the bed as I head to Chuck. _Three's a crowd_.

 _I'm coming, Chuck!_ For once, I make up my mind in good time. I am not too late.

* * *

Paralyzed?

* * *

But I never make it. Not as Chuck planned, not as I expected.

A couple of days later, I am standing beside Shaw on a Paris street that starts to seem familiar. I know I am the one who killed his wife. He knows. Beckman thought he could handle it, be okay with it. I guess I thought he could too, despite all the reasons he had given me to wonder. He seemed okay. Chuck even believed it. Or tried to.

Shaw has brought me here to kill me. Revenge. I am 'the man' he would die to kill. He fooled us all. Because we all thought he was a good spy.

I should have wondered on the plane trip to Paris. But my head and my heart were so full of Chuck. Still, I should have wondered. Shaw never tried to touch me, kiss me. I was so relieved that he didn't that I did not consider what it meant. I was planning to tell him about Chuck - to end it - but I thought it best to do it later, after the mission. I needed to tell him. Our night together was a mistake. I was thinking of someone else.

But so was he. I know that now for sure. Eve is here, too, in Paris. Three is a crowd. Shaw is going to make it two. Himself and his ghost. Leave my body behind.

I draw my gun and then I feel the drug. Paralysis begins, sets in. I freeze, become frozen. I can see, hear, think, but I cannot act. Shaw has reduced me to me, my pre-Burbank self. He takes me to a chair in the cafe and begins to explain himself to me. But I am not listening. I am thinking and feeling.

* * *

Shaw showed up and kept me from going to Chuck. I could not reach Chuck by phone. Could not explain.

Shaw and I are supposed to be after the Ring, higher-ups, but we end up in a building in which no one is present. There is a monitor. A video. A woman. I see it, her. She looks familiar. I have seen her before. I see her face in a file. A file Hannah Traylor gave me in Paris. My Red Test. And then Shaw tells me. The woman is his wife. Was his wife. The woman who had been with us all along. Eve Shaw.

I cannot tell if Shaw blames me or believes we share a tragedy. He holds me and I let him. Eve. The Garden. Life and Death. Good and Evil. I don't know how to process it all.

Chuck finds us like that. He has brought an army to save me. He thinks I chose Shaw. Nothing works for me.

I cannot let on in the debriefing. I cannot let Shaw or Beckman suspect that we were planning to run. I try to let Chuck know that I did not choose Shaw. I thank Chuck for coming for me, tell him I appreciated the tank. But I can tell he does not understand. He leaves, trailing defeat.

I finish up as fast as I can. Beckman gives me new orders. Chuck is to be part of the op. My chance comes, at last. I rush to his apartment.

I find him, a little drunk, worse for both ice cream and whiskey. Morgan is tied up in game controllers. I free him and he leaves me alone with Chuck.

Chuck's sadness washes over me. But I can make this right. This time I am here. He tells me that he believes I am leaving with Shaw. Before I can deny it, he asks me if I love him. I asked him at the restaurant when Shaw got up and Chuck sat down, what he wanted me to say. He is asking me to say it now. That he wants to know, needs to know, and believes I am leaving, that he asks me 'just for the record' - it all breaks my heart. I would have a hard time answering without the sadness. It takes me a minute to find my way to speech. He takes my silence to be an answer: no. He asks me, ashamed and self-conscious, if he is making a fool of himself. I finally answer. Not that last question, the early one, the big one. And I do not answer just for the record. _Yes_. And for once, I try to explain and do. I kiss him after I tell him _yes_ four times. _I didn't count then, but I do now._ He tastes like whiskey and ice cream. He tastes like love.

* * *

I can taste him even now, paralyzed. Shaw is still talking. A tear runs down my cheek. I feel it but can do nothing about it.

I feel it but can do nothing about it.

The epigraph of my life. I suppose it is fitting that I die here, like this. I lived like this until Burbank. I was prepared to live like this again. And then there was a _Casey ex Machina_ moment, and I thought I might, at last, be able to feel and do something about it. The taste of whiskey and ice cream. The taste of love. I never got to make love to Chuck.

This is all sad. But, strangely, I am reconciled to it. I do not want to die. But the secret I had been keeping for so long, the secret that had caused me so much pain and trouble and joy, I finally told. Chuck knows I love him. I did not say the words - I would have, someday - but he knows. He tasted love on my lips. I know he did. I told him that when I got back to Burbank, it was all going to happen, me and him. I guess not, now. But for once, I closed the distance between my heart and my lips. He tasted the love on my lips. He kissed my heart and I kissed his, and if I die, I die a woman in love, in love with a man who knows she loves him. I finally expressed myself. He knows me. Me. How I feel.

I do not want to die this way. But I can die this way. This time, I have not caused my own paralysis. This time, I resolved and acted in time. _Yes, Chuck, yes, yes, yes. I love you._

I want him so much, miss him so much, that it is like he is there, in Paris, with me and Shaw and Eve. And before I can decide if it is appearance or reality, I slip into unconsciousness. Blurred images follow me into the darkness. Chuck. Shaw. A river. A river of unconsciousness.

* * *

Consciousness. Awake. Blurry then focused. Chuck. A hotel room. A bed. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. What happened? Chuck tries to tell me. Images come. They piece together. I take over the narration. Shaw. Tried to kill me. Chuck. Saved me.

Chuck killed Shaw and saved me. It was not a dream. Not an illusion. Not a hallucination. It was Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. I could say his name forever.

Chuck is upset. He had to kill Shaw. But he is still Chuck. Yes, he is still Chuck. We kiss. Beckman interrupts, computer, but we shut her up. The computer. And her.

Chuck starts a spiral. I feel warm all over. No, hot all over. Molten. I am already lava. Volcanic. Ready to erupt. I am awake to my dream. I tell him to shut up and kiss me. I can do something about this. Reality, not appearance. Not more or less real. Just real. Real. I am still here. He is still Chuck. I am no longer paralyzed.

We can make time.

We make love. Time and again. For real. For keeps.

* * *

 **A/N1** Tune in next time for a long train ride, skimpy lingerie, and copious conversation. Chapter 38, "New Traditionalists (Part One): Spy Novel". That will be the first chapter of the final S3 story (mostly non-canon).

The pace will ease up for a while now. I have travel coming and new classes to teach. But I expect to post 38 before I head to Spain.

A special thanks to _David Carner_ and _WvonB_ for all the supererogation! (And not just with (Mis)Ed. Over a million words in 15 months, and you have been with me for almost all of them. What a kindness!)

Zettel


	38. New Traditionalists (One)

**A/N1** Cue the Cure, _Just Like Heaven._ Lots of intercourse - um, in Webster's sense - and, _cough_ , in the other sense. [Pulls on collar.] Honeymooners, Whaddaya gonna do?

A gear-shifting moment in the story sequence.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

 _New Traditionalists (Part One)_ :

 _Spy Novel_

* * *

Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick  
The one that makes me scream she said  
The one that makes me laugh she said  
Threw her arms around my neck  
Show me how you do it and I'll promise you  
I'll promise that I'll run away with you, I'll run away with you

Spinning on that dizzy edge  
Kissed her face and kissed her head  
Dreamed of all the different ways, I had to make her glow  
Why are you so far away she said  
Why won't you ever know that I'm in love with you?  
That I'm in love with you?

You, soft and only, you lost and lonely  
You, strange as angels  
Dancing in the deepest oceans  
Twisting in the water  
You're just like a dream  
You're just like a dream

\- The Cure, _Just Like Heaven_

* * *

Sarah would not roll off Chuck. She squeezed his naked body closer to hers. She was just getting started. So was he. They were just getting started.

When she loosened her arms a little, Chuck's eyes opened. He looked up into her eyes. He smiled at her and she smiled at him. They sighed in unison.

"That was…" She searched for a word, then gave up and put her forehead softly against his. He moved just enough to put his lips against hers. She parted her lips and felt him slip his tongue into her mouth. He shifted his body beneath her and their bodies joined. She moaned low, vibrations echoing in her chest and against him. She saw his eyes roll back in his head a little. Then he focused on her again.

"That was…" He tried to complete her search but had no more luck than she did. She moved her hips down and backward slowly and his eyes closed. They sighed in unison.

"You, Sarah Walker, are eloquent." She moved up and forward. They sighed in unison once more. Sarah trembled, desire awake and urgent.

They had been in the hotel room all day. They both needed fluids. They both needed to sleep. But they had not been willing to sacrifice waking bodily contact even for a second. They had been together but apart for so long. Now they were together _together._ The intimacy that existed between them, the intimacy Sarah had missed and craved, like oxygen, was not just re-established but redoubled.

Their movements took them from shared sighs to alternating muffled cries, ending with Sarah's scream above Chuck's deep groan. She still did not roll off him. They held each other and fell asleep, Sarah completely limp, afloat on the man she loved.

ooOoo

Sarah woke up a few hours later. For a moment, she panicked, afraid it had been a dream, afraid she was still in DC, in Shaw's apartment. She was not. She had slid in her sleep, off of Chuck, but not entirely. She was on her side on the bed, but with most of her body was still snug against Chuck's side. Her head was resting on his shoulder. She breathed him in and giggled silently to herself, amused by her own action.

She had noticed his scent long ago, on their very first date, when she had danced so provocatively with him, provocatively for him. _Note to Self: reprise that dance soon, and to make sure it ends as it should end, both of us deliriously spent and happy._ His scent had always affected her strongly. She looked forward to cover cuddling, not just for the cuddles, but because she would still have his scent clinging to her when she got back to her apartment. She could go to bed and smell him as if he were there, against her. When she had spent the night at Chuck's after Cole Barker had been taken, she had donned one of Chuck's t-shirts, purposely taking one from the top of his hamper, so that she could enjoy his scent. She inhaled it again, savoring it. _Huh? Maybe that seems a little odd... but love makes you...odd._ _Even me. Especially me._ She giggled silently again.

She reached up, concentrating, and inserted her pinkie into a small tunnel of curls on Chuck's head. This was no dream - well, it was, but because it was so gloriously real. She was not at Shaw's.

She pulled her finger from his curls, feeling all at once like she had betrayed him and had no right to be where she was.

She wished she could take it all back, that trip to DC, that night at Shaw's, what she had done in defeat and desolation. She needed to talk to Chuck. It felt wrong to say nothing about Shaw.

Chuck moved in his sleep. She saw one eye open narrowly, then the corner of his mouth twitched, a miniature smile. He had just had her thought. _This is not a dream._ Love for him tidal waved over her; she pushed herself up to kiss him passionately. He responded in kind. But Sarah forced herself to end the kiss before it led them into the throes of lovemaking. It would soon, she hoped, but she had to _try._ If this was going to work, to last - and although it scared her, when she thought of them as making love for keeps, she had meant it - she had to teach herself (with Chuck's help) to speak. To say things. _Like 'I love you'. Say it, Sarah. He deserves the words, not just to know they are true. - Not yet. Soon._ When she pulled back slowly, Chuck gave her a curious look. She sat, her feet tucked under her.

"What?" Chuck asked, a hint of worry in his voice.

"We need to talk, Chuck." Sarah did her best to make sure her voice sounded warm, not ominous. Then she thought of bo sticks and training, and of them hurting each other. "You were right in Castle, the day we were training with bo sticks. We always need to talk. I always need to talk…"

Chuck reached out and cupped her cheek gently. "It's all forgiven, Sarah. This, now, us, what's happened…" his serious glance twinkled for a second "...what keeps happening in this bed. I hope, among other things, that it has been us forgiving each other."

Sarah's breath caught in her throat. Her heart buoyed in her chest. She wanted to kiss him but she needed to say things. _Speak, Sarah. "_ But what I said, Chuck, 'lemon', 'waste of a download'...I was so awful."

"I understand, Sarah. I'm sorry for making you say those things, sorry...for Prague. I know how much I hurt you; I was so awful. I didn't know how to explain it, because I did not understand." He moved his hand to her bare shoulder, caressing it as he went on. "I am still working it out, Sarah. But I should have talked to you then, found a way to tell you how confused I was. I'm supposed to be the talker - 'articulate schnook', I believe that is the technical term - but my tongue failed me."

He looked suddenly downcast. Sarah leaned toward him and breathed softly in his ear: "It certainly hasn't failed me…."

His countenance lifted and he grinned as she pulled back. "Well," he said, his grin growing impish, "you are my favorite tongue-twister…"

Blushing, she swatted his chest. Then she laughed.

Joining in, he added:

"Say this sharply, say this sweetly,  
Say this shortly, say this softly.  
Say this sixteen times in succession."

They needed to talk. They would. But she had to have him, had to have him inside her. Her need was immediate and undeniable. Leaning in again, she whispered, her voice warm syrup, dripping. "Love me, Chuck."

He did.

ooOoo

It was dark outside when Sarah woke up. She had to get up. She had to go to the bathroom and she was a sticky mess, but a happy sticky mess, and she hoped to be messy again soon. Often.

She kissed Chuck's cheek lightly and got up. He smiled in his sleep. _Chuck._ She went to the bathroom and took a shower. She could not remember ever feeling as she now felt. Nothing she had imagined - and her imagination had been active for almost three years in Burbank - prepared her for the reality of making love to Chuck.

She had not imagined the joy that attended the overwhelming excitement and the consuming pleasures, had not imagined the oneness of emotional and physical feeling, soul and body, head and heart. Wholly flesh and wholly spirit. Spirit enfleshed. _One_.

Maybe she should have been able to imagine it a little. She had a foretaste of it in the kiss before the bomb. She sighed.

She had been divided her entire life, all the life she could remember, anyway. Modular. Her internal space was a crossword-puzzle labyrinth of boxes and cells. Clues across and down, but the puzzle never solved. That was still true. She had a lot to work through, still, and she knew it. But she also knew it was not her fate. She could work through it. She could continue to change. She had changed in just the last few hours. But it was going to require that she speak, talk. _I can do this, just not all at once._

She shut off the shower and got out, wrapped her body in one towel, her hair in another. Chuck was still asleep. Sarah picked up the room phone and talked to the concierge. She made plans for tomorrow. To keep Beckman at bay, they needed to leave the room that Beckman had arranged. Sarah thought about waiting for Chuck in Prague and then she thought about Chuck waiting for her at Union Station. She had a thought.

ooOoo

They woke at dawn and made love again. Ordered room service, ate their fill. Worked to continue replenishing their fluids. They checked out, leaving their bags with the concierge. They spent the morning walking. It was sunny. Paris was aglow in the soft morning light.

Since neither had brought much, they stopped in various shops, buying clothes and toiletries. Sarah slipped away from Chuck for a few minutes while he had coffee at a cafe, and found a lingerie shop. She regretted nothing about the night before, but she had always wanted to present herself to Chuck in something skimpy, sexy, something like the lilac lingerie. Over the last three years, he had seen her in such things a few times, and it had always been for a mission, never for him, never just for him. She wanted it to be for him, just for him. And for her. She had been imagining the look in his eyes when he saw her.

When she joined him at the cafe, she saw him look at the shop's name on her bag. One eyebrow rose. _Oh, a lot more will rise when you see these, Chuck._ She gave him an enigmatic smile. He shook his head and chuckled.

"Last night, Sarah, you wanted to talk and I felt like maybe we didn't talk about what was on your mind...or first on your mind…" He looked into her eyes.

Meeting his gaze, she sighed softly. "Yes...I mean, no...You are right, we didn't talk about what I had in mind...It's about Shaw…"

She was unsure how to go forward. Chuck put his coffee cup down and took her hand. "Sarah, if it's okay with you, I am going to focus on the fact that you chose me, not him. That's all that matters. The stuff before...I don't...need to know anything else, one way or the other."

Sarah squeezed his hand. "I was coming to Union Station, you know, when Shaw showed up, demanding that I go with him, stop the Ring. I couldn't get my phone to work. I tried. I did choose you, Chuck. I never _chose_ Shaw...I...I _ended_ up with him. So much of my life has been like that…A one-way ticket to a destination not of my choosing..."

He scooted his chair nearer to her, now taking her hand in both of his. "You know, Sarah, that's something else I want to apologize to you for…"

She gave him a puzzled look.

"For so long, after you first came to Burbank, I projected this...fantasy onto you…" when Sarah raised her eyebrows, he laughed through his nose and shook his head, "yeah, well, maybe more than one. But the one I had in mind was the blonde Bond-shell fantasy. This fantasy that you were a movie spy...living a glamorous life of international intrigue...Geez, I even sound like a movie trailer when I try to explain it...Anyway, I had that fantasy. Maybe it would be better to say I had that fear...I don't know. Maybe I held onto it for so long because I was so confused about how you felt, and the fantasy kept me from hoping for too much, made it clear I could never measure up...And that got worse when I found out about Bryce."

Sarah started to respond, but Chuck squeezed her hand and went on quietly. "I still don't know much about your past. I know that you really are an amazing spy. But I also know that your life has been...hard. I don't understand it all, but I get it. I hate that for you. I really do."

"Chuck," Sarah managed to say through her tightened throat, "if I made you feel like you didn't measure up... _when_ I made you feel like you didn't measure up, that was not what I wanted to be doing, wanted to do. And maybe I made you feel like that because, from almost the beginning, you not only measured up, you became the standard of measurement…" Sarah had a wicked thought and she caught Chuck's eyes, "...my meter stick." He blushed, looked at his feet, and she became serious again, though her grin lingered. "But I couldn't let you know, couldn't let on. Cameras, bugs, eyes..."

Sobered, they sat in silence for a moment. Sarah stood up. "Come on, boyfriend, I have a surprise for you." She saw Chuck's eyes flit to the lingerie bag. "No, Chuck, not that. _Not yet_."

He stood up. Then she saw him stop, a smile overtook his entire face. "Boyfriend?"

She smiled, a smile so huge it hurt her cheeks. The word had affected her too. Deeply. _Real. This is simple. This is real. This is everything._ Nodding, she took his hand, leading him to the Eiffel Tower.

ooOoo

Paris was arrayed beneath them, shining in the sunlight. They had both put on sunglasses they had bought; the scene was almost too bright to bear. Chuck was killing Sarah, amusing her to death. She knew he had longed to see the Eiffel Tower. She knew he had a wondrous childlikeness, but _this?_ He was almost running in place he was so excited. But even as engrossed, excited as he was, she was heart-warmed by his greater engrossment in her, excitement about her, by his longing for her to share in his engrossment and excitement, for his wonder to rub off on her. And, as always, it did. _Thank you, Chuck, for you._ She had been to Paris before. It held bad memories. But Chuck transformed it, redeemed it. Up there, in the air, above the city of lights, Sarah felt her long darkness beginning to end.

ooOoo

Lingerie. Silk and lace, see-through and opaque. Private modeling. On (not for long), then off. Strewn here and there. The stiff stubble of Chuck's unshaven face rubbing wonderfully against tender, sensitive reaches of Sarah's skin. Cries of pleasure, whole-body tremors.

They were in the train berth Sarah had arranged. They made love until exhaustion overtook them. They slept. They woke, ate (room service, no appetite for the dining car, for other people), lounged, made love until exhaustion overtook them…

They were laying on the bed, Sarah draped in a translucent wrap, Chuck naked. She was lazily, dreamily, running her finger down the center of his chest, down, down, waiting for his breath to hitch, then slowly back up. He had his eyes shut but was not sleeping.

"Chuck?"

"Mmm. Yeah?"

"Do you know _The Spy Who Came in From the Cold_?"

He opened one eye to look at her, his gaze quizzical. "Um. I know you, Sarah Walker."

She laughed. "Well, yes, but I meant the novel, John le Carré."

Chuck opened the other eye then, giving her a stereo quiz. "You read spy novels?"

She blushed a little. "No, not my normal fare. I mean, I read. I used to read now and then on missions...But I actually saw the movie first recently, then read the novel. Since we weren't...dating..."

Chuck smiled through a small wince. " _Cover_ dating…"

Sarah felt herself blush. "...Dating. Since we weren't dating, I spent a lot of time watching movies. I saw it then I read the novel…"

Chuck "Oh. Right, the movie. Burton, right? Richard Burton. From the '60s?"

She nodded. "I liked it, the movie. And I loved the book, even though I made myself sort of forget about it…sort of not think about it. Much."

Chuck was still trying to catch on to her point. "As I recall - I've only seen the movie, not read the book, the portrayal of the spy life is really dark. A chilly sort of hell. Gray on gray. Ablaze in gray."

Sarah's brow was furrowed, but she laughed for a moment. "You are an articulate schnook." Her look shifted. "You know, Chuck, Dad...he likes you."

"Really?" A pleased smile crossed his face.

"Yes, well, as much as he can like anyone from the right side of the tracks….He was sure that you...that you love me. He bet on your love for me when he put that money in your account. That's as close to trusting as Jack Burton gets." She gave Chuck a warm but rueful smile, then shrugged.

"But about the novel…." Chuck asked.

"You said my life before was...hard. That's true, Chuck. But it is also hard for me to talk about, for a whole...tangle of reasons. I want to tell you...but it is going to take me time, maybe, for some parts of it, a long time.

"There's a character in the novel, a Langston Graham character, the chief of the British Service, Control…" she paused and Chuck barked a bitter laugh, "he says that you can't be less ruthless than the opposition just because your government is benevolent…"

Sarah stopped and swallowed. She soldiered on. "I was our ruthlessness, Chuck...Ruthless to anyone Graham deemed to be the opposition. I did that job for many years. I did it because I didn't know what else to do, Chuck."

She stopped. "I know we have talked about this, sort of, after Mauser, but I just wanted to say that. I want you to know who you are in bed with. I hope one day to be able to tell you more...I believe one day I will need to tell you more. But I want you to know…"

"I _know,_ Sarah, not the details, but the 'ruthless to the opposition', that I get. The rest is yours to share, as you need. And, no, Sarah, if you are thinking it, you will not come in from the cold as Burton's character did, by dying." He locked eyes with her. "I will not let anyone hurt you, Sarah. Do you have any idea how precious you are to me?"

She did. She could hardly credit it, but she did. He loved her. She knew it. She put her arms around him and melted into his embrace.

ooOoo

But they had to start thinking about what happened next. They began to do so, reluctant to leave the bubble of their extended lovemaking, the intimacy and beauty of their berth.

The subject finally came up and Sarah felt herself beginning to get anxious. As of the moment, they were technically AWOL, but they could likely extend this for a while, another day, maybe two, before Beckman sent out the dogs. But they could still walk this back. Come up with a story about why they had gone 'off grid' briefly.

They were no longer handler/asset, trainer/trainee: they were at last Sarah and Chuck (emphasis on 'and'). Chuck was technically an agent. No one but Sarah, Chuck and Casey knew that Chuck had not passed the Red Test. The old structure that kept them apart was no longer in place, at least not formally. Beckman, would, undoubtedly resist them being together, fight it. The thought of going back and pretending again...It broke Sarah's heart, made it hard for her to breathe. She had tasted life, the part of her that was free was now not merely part but the whole of her. She could not - she would not - walk any of her happiness back.

She had lived in self-denial her entire life, in abyssal self-denial that by turns required and became self-deception and self-disbelief. Chuck talked about the guy he had been when she showed up in Burbank, the guy who hated himself. Sarah knew what Chuck meant from her own case. She had lived in self-loathing, muted or unmuted, since she was a girl, since she first knew that the 'games' she and her dad were playing were wrong, but went on playing them. That had been the beginning of her internal crossword-puzzle labyrinth, her elaborate strategies for hiding from herself. Sarah could not bear Sarah, could not bare Sarah. Sarah vs. Sarah.

Until now, until Chuck. She could not go back to the way things were before. Before this berth, before this, before Chuck, before there was a real _them._ She was not going to settle for sort of real. She was damned if she would pretend about this. Maybe she had not found a way to say the three words that lit up her heart, but she was living them. She moved to their rhythm every time they made love, strong, deep and oh-so-urgent. And she was talking. A little. Maybe indirectly, slowly. But she was speaking.

She spoke a vow to him, and he spoke one to her. They decided to run. But Sarah had not had time to plan. Chuck was still the Intersect. They would soon be hunted. But she could not go backward. Would not. They vowed; they said 'I do' to each other in the moment. Those words, in particular, stuck with Sarah and she pondered them after the fact, in awe of them and afraid to touch them, like they were a newborn.

ooOoo

They had fallen asleep knotted together. The motion of the train, noticeable after their own motions, had lulled them both. But Sarah woke up or mostly did. Her mind was in-between dream and waking, wandering idly.

She had not had the corpse dream in a long time. Not since the mudbath, she realized. Even during those awful months after Prague, it had not revisited her. It seemed to be gone. _Why?_ The answer came to her. _Because I love Chuck and I finally acknowledged it._ Her acknowledged love for him had ended the corpse dream. Loving him, she was alive and knew it. And it had not come back because, despite all the misery of recent months, she had never stopped being in love with Chuck. Even if she said she had to Shaw, in a desperate bid to convince herself of it. But she had never convinced herself and she never thought she had. In fact, she knew she hadn't.

Chuck stirred beside her. A desperate bid….

"Chuck," Sarah began softly. He opened his eyes, gave her a smiling glance. "Why'd you give me the charm bracelet?"

Chuck pulled his pillow underneath his chest, scrunching it so that it propped him up. He chewed on his lip for a minute.

"Because I wanted you to know that I loved you. That's the short answer." Sarah nodded. "I mean, I know you knew that - you did, didn't you?" Sarah nodded, blushing deeply, exhilarated and ashamed to admit it, that she had known all along. "But I wanted to tell you. I was...afraid, though. Afraid of surveillance, afraid that if I told you, straight out, I would get you in trouble, us in trouble…

"Although I figured out that it was really not _my_ feelings that were likely to cause trouble," he gave her a quick, sympathetic glance, "but I was afraid primarily that if I said them you would shoot me down, say something that would end my hopes once and for all." He paused and looked away, then back at her. "By the way, did they train you to withstand truth serum, because, I just realized, you must be able to withstand it…"

Sarah dropped her eyes and twisted the sheet in her hands. She nodded while her eyes remained down. Chuck laughed and huffed together. "Good to know." He waited for her to look at him again, then went on, his eyes holding hers, somehow caressing her. "So, I decided to give you the thing that means the most to me. Because I knew you would understand that, and I knew that if you took it, if you kept it, there was hope. That you had hopes, even if you wouldn't - couldn't - share them. I guess I wanted to feel close to you...and to know if you wanted to feel close to me. Because I felt close to you all the time, but I kept worrying that it was all in my head…"

Sarah put her hand out and gently rubbed the back of Chuck's neck. "It was never all in your head, Chuck, and I am sorry that I deliberately made you think that it was even while I also deliberately made you think it wasn't. You have put up with so much from me…"

"Why are you asking about the bracelet?"

Sarah took a deep breath; she did not want to talk about this, but she had to. "Because of 'Sam'."

Chuck's eyes withdrew from her a bit, hurt showing in them. She kept rubbing his neck.

"I told Shaw that because I thought you and I were done. I thought you had chosen Hannah. And chosen the spy life. That there was no hope for us.

"But...I never felt any hope for anything with Shaw...I just wanted _out,_ Chuck, to stop hurting, to find something that was like what we had...Even under the cover dating, even in the midst of all the pretending and doubting, we always had something, Chuck. We were a real couple.

"Shaw and I weren't ever real...despite my...despite my telling him my name. But I was trying to make us real, trying to find something between us to hope for.

"But Chuck...I never stopped...I never stopped feeling for you the way I have from the beginning. I know that sort of makes what I did...telling him my name...worse but, maybe it sort of makes it better too...As twisted as this sounds, Chuck, I told him my name because of how I felt about you. I did not want to feel that way anymore. I wanted to feel...something for Shaw. My name was a desperate bid to make those things happen...It absolutely did not work.

"I believe, Chuck, forgive my unbelief."

Sarah looked back at Chuck. She had not been able to hold Chuck's gaze through that speech, one of the longest of her life. She saw nothing in his eyes now but sorrow and sympathy...and empathy.

"I forgive you, Sarah. But will you forgive me? Hannah? I believe, Sarah, forgive my unbelief, please."

"We're running away together, aren't we, Chuck?" He gave her a slow grin. Nodded decisively.

She used her hand behind his neck to pull him firmly to her and they began to kiss the hurts away.

ooOoo

They had no more than vowed to run when the spy life caught up with them. Terrorists on the train. Sarah realized it at first independent of Chuck; it turned out the same was true for him (via flash). But they could not keep it from each other. They decided to take action, stop the terrorists, _then_ they would run.

Foiling the terrorists turned out to be more complicated than they imagined, and things went sideways. Casey and Morgan showed up. Sarah began to worry about running.

ooOoo

Her old fears were still there - her fears about normal life and whether she could find a place in it. She could face those fears now, but they were still there. And Chuck was still the Intersect. And then something she should have been clear about forever became clear. She had had the thought before but did not let herself linger on it. If they ran, they would not be leaving the spy life, running out of it; they would be running deeper into it. Covers, lies...no home. To leave the spy life while Chuck was still the Intersect was to leave behind the US government, but not to leave behind spying. They would be forced to remain spies in order to keep from being caught by spies. _As ruthless as the opposition._ And they would not be able to be together, openly together, as Sarah wanted. They would not be Sarah Walker and Chuck Bartowski, they would be other people with other names. Sarah was done with...with that kind...of a name change.

And Chuck had told her he wanted to be a spy and be with her. He had proven he would choose her over the spy life, but she was still wondering what kind of spy Chuck had become, what he had in mind. He did not mean by the word what Beckman meant by it. Maybe he was only technically a spy in Beckman's sense, but maybe he was fully a spy in his own. But what did he mean? Whatever he meant, it was something novel. _Of course, it is. This is Chuck, my Chuck._ Chuck could not get through the paces Beckman set for him. But that was not because he was a failure, or because the Intersect was malfunctioning. It was because he was Chuck and he functioned in his own way, even if he had himself forgotten that for a little while. Chuck could not keep pace for Beckman because he was hearing a different drummer, the music differently measured, the sound too unusual for normal spies to hear.

ooOoo

Sarah and Chuck fought the terrorists while handcuffed together. As they fought, she felt a synergy of the sort she had felt with Bryce in the Buy More - but one that went far beyond physical attunement, far beyond what she felt with Bryce. She and Chuck were _together_. The fact that they were bound to each other - handcuffed - did not interfere with their synergy, it completed it, made it all that it should have been. _God, I love him so much. I am going to leap again._

She told Chuck she did not want him to choose her and give up the spy life. She had realized that, personal misery aside, the spy work she had done on the team had been different than the spy work of her past.

Maybe Chuck had been changing them all, from the beginning, her and Casey and himself, into a different kind of spy.

Novel spies, not spies from a novel.

They could run and be the spies running forced them to be. Or they could stay and chase Chuck's vision, be the spies he wanted them to be.

She thought of the Devo album that seemed to follow them around since that first night at _Pressing and Grinding_.

 _New Traditionalists._

That is what Chuck was doing. Changing, renewing the tradition. Reimagining it. She wanted to change it with him, re-imagine it with him.

She said 'I do' again - to Chuck and their new spy life.

 _Leap_.

* * *

 **A/N2** Choo! Choo!

Tune in next time as Sarah and Ellie get down to brass tacks, and Sarah confronts 'I love you', Chapter 39, "New Traditionalists (Part Two): Me, You, Too."

A couple of thoughts.

First a philosophico-critical point (skip it if you have no taste for such things).

I am consistently puzzled by viewers who claim to love Chuck, the character, but to be indifferent or even hostile to Sarah. It is not that I don't understand the events or scenes in the show in which the reaction to Sarah is rooted, but it is as though viewers can only take in those events or scenes synchronically, not diachronically.

Yes, she kisses Barker pretty steamily. But she turned down his proffered tropical vacation to face the continuing difficulties with Chuck, in Burbank. Yes, she tries to make a go of it with Shaw. But she chooses Chuck and drops Shaw almost as if he hadn't existed. Shaw was an attempt to escape the ruination of Chuck, and as soon as she believed or knew that the ruination had not occurred, that she was mistaken, Shaw becomes an afterthought.

What matters most is the wider view, the diachronic view, not Sarah's momentary confusions or difficulties. When we step back and take a wider view, the pattern of her behavior unmistakably spells 'Chuck'.

There's a deeper point here: _Character is only revealed across time, not in the moment._ We all have bad moments, stray thoughts, aberrations, but if they are _bad_ moments, _stray_ thoughts, _aberrations_ , then they are not revelatory of our deeper character. We understand ourselves that way. How about understanding fictional characters that way too?

But here's my primary point. Loving the Chuck character means believing what the show tells us about him, believing _in_ him. He is convinced, almost from the get-go, that Sarah is _lovable_. I do not mean 'lovable' in the trivial sense ( _he loves her, thus she is lovable_ ), I mean 'lovable' in the deeper sense, _genuinely worthy of love._

If you think Chuck is wrong about that, then it is hard to see how you could believe what the show tells you about him or believe in him, since he is deceived about what is very nearly his deepest conviction. If we believe in Chuck, we have to believe in Sarah. Else, we consign Chuck to the category of _massive dupe_. And we render puzzling why the show really matters to us. So, viewing Sarah sympathetically is not just a matter of reading the show right-to-left, it is also a matter of trusting Chuck's POV. Yes, he is sometimes confused here and there, and, yes, his POV is _never exhaustive_ (as I have stressed in this story). Still, he gets the world and the objects in it (especially the important ones, like Sarah) right. If we give up on that, I no longer think we are watching the show. We are just watching images on a screen.

"[Husserl] has cleared the way for a new treatise on the passions that would be inspired by this simple truth, so utterly ignored by the refined among us: if we love a woman, it is because she is lovable. We are delivered from Proust…"

This is the way Sartre puts the point about lovability in his great essay on Husserl, _Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea in Husserl's Phenomenology._ It captures what I take to be Chuck's conviction: Sarah is lovable. There is something in her, about her, that makes what he feels for her appropriate, fitting. Chuck is not stretched on any Proustean bed.

Second, I've been working mostly from memory as I have written this, rewatching only little pieces here and there. But I have to say how hard it is to fight down the conviction that the only person connected with the show who was thinking hard about Sarah was YS. Right? And she really is remarkably good. Just look at the remarkable transformation of Sarah Walker inside their berth on the train, the shift in posture, the more expansive gestures, the laughter, the quickness of response. The lightness of her embodiment of Sarah after the ponderousness of it for so much of the show, especially S3...Most of the feeling of liberation in Honeymooners is due to her, to what she does on camera. Hats off.)

Third, thanks to _WvonB_ for a helpful conversation about the handcuffs in Honeymooners. A deeply significant image.


	39. New Traditionalists (Two)

**A/N1** A transitional, albeit an important short chapter as we head toward the final, longer chapter of this story and so of S3. Since my plans for S4 do not have me doing much with the early episodes of the season, I put some relevant material here. I will say more about my plans for S4 at the end of the next chapter. I'm looking forward to the two long stories that will make up its treatment.

Thanks so much for so many enthusiastic and thoughtful reviews and PMs. I always want what I read to make me feel and make me think all at once. I would like to believe that in some small way I am doing that for my readers.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

 _New Traditionalists (Part Two)_ :

 _Me, You, Too_

* * *

That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long untaught I did not hear,  
But now the chorus I hear and am elated,  
A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of daybreak I hear,  
A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves,  
A transparent bass shuddering lusciously under and through the universe,  
The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and violins, all of these I fill myself with,  
I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the exquisite meanings, I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving,  
contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;  
I do not think the performers know themselves—but now I think I begin to know them.

\- Walt Whitman, _That Music Always Round Me_

* * *

They were on the plane, heading home. _Home._ That's what Burbank had become to her. Sarah loved it, despite the difficulties of the months she had spent there. And she knew why. Because her home was at home there: Chuck. She _loved_ Burbank. She _loved_ Chuck.

She had still not said the words to him. He had said them in their berth but had been careful not to pressure her for a response.

She had said _yes_ to the question of whether she loved him, said it four times over. But the words themselves, _that word_ , why was it hard to say? It was true. So true. He knew it. She had shown him in the hotel room and on the train, shown him with all her might, all of her, head to toe. Why not just say it? A memory...

* * *

"Of course, spies fall in love. No one is in complete control of his or her emotional life. Love happens to you, sometimes against your will. (Think of the stick-in-the-mud Mr. Darcy and his disastrous proposal to Elizabeth - those of you who have read a book.)" Laughter. "Spies do fall in love. The problem is that they often have to burn the ones they love, or abandon them, or lie to them, or all of the above. This is a brutal, unnatural life. Don't lie to yourself about that…It has its rewards and its satisfactions, but don't lie to yourself about its costs; that will only make them worse, steeper..."

* * *

The words came back to her. The seduction instructor at the Farm.

She heard he retired not long after she graduated, or would have graduated, had Graham allowed her to stay for the ceremony. _Yes, spies do fall in love. I have. Chuck has. But maybe realizing that is part of becoming the sort of spies we are becoming. Maybe Beckman will give us some space, some elbow room to work on this together._ _God, I hope so._

 _I am in love with Chuck Bartowski, and I still don't know what to do about it, exactly. But I am doing something about it._

Sarah reached over and interlaced her fingers with Chuck's. The image stirred another memory. Miami, CATs, Carina….

* * *

Carina gazed off into the dark distance again. "I dropped out of school to get married." Sarah felt her expression slacken in surprise. Carina noted it. "Right. That's what everyone thought. I was a party girl at school. No, that's not quite it. I was the party girl at school. Until I met him. Then everything changed. Everything I thought I knew I realized I did not know. Things I thought I could not feel I felt." She looked at Sarah. "Never underestimate what one person can do to your life, Sarah. He reoriented me. He graduated and, just after his graduation, he proposed. I said _yes_ \- zero hesitation, all in."

* * *

Sarah had never known why Carina told her that, gave her that secret (even if she half-heartedly tried to walk it back the next day, even if she had never mentioned it again). She now had an idea. Carina had been the one to tell Sarah that Chuck loved her. Sarah had found out in conversation with Chuck (on the train) that Carina told Chuck Sarah loved him.

Had Carina seen this coming, seen the possibility and then the actuality of it with Chuck? Seen something in Sarah that reminded Carina of something in herself, a capacity, a desire, a need, to love - a willingness to go all in, to say _yes_ ( _four times!)_. Had she seen that in Sarah so clearly, so early? Had she known something about Sarah that Sarah would not know about herself?

 _Never underestimate what one person can do to your life, Sarah._ Whether Carina had a moment of foresight or just an educated guess, she was right, and right about Sarah.

Sarah looked over at Chuck. He had a comic book open on his lap but his eyes were closed. Sarah felt impossibly close to him. She squeezed his hand gently, just for herself, to give an outlet to a trickle of the billowing love she felt for him.

 _Love_.

Marriage.

 _Marriage?_

They said 'I do' twice to each other in the past few days, worn cover rings. They had pretended to be honeymooners on the train.

But like almost all their covers with each other, there had been something real under the cover, a lot real under the cover, a lot real under and over the covers, a lot, everything: _they had been on a honeymoon_. Sarah had tried to make sure Chuck knew how she felt about them, the future, even if she could not quite say it directly. She had told him, twice, that they were running away together (when they had been planning that). For her, they were not 'dating' in some casual sense of the term. This was for keeps. Real. Really. But ' _for keeps'_?

Sarah had never been anyone's girlfriend before - she had not been Bryce's, and that was the only relationship of any sort in her past - and, although she was enjoying it thoroughly, _absolutely thoroughly,_ she had not been tested back in the real world, or what passed for their real world, back in Burbank. There, then, she had pretended to be Chuck's girlfriend. Now, returning, she was Chuck's girlfriend.

That made their return easier and harder, less frightening and more frightening. Her patterns of overt behavior could remain the same, but the meaning of it all would be different. It was now aiming at something: part of a real relationship with Chuck was facing the future, embracing it, looking forward to it. But...

 _Married? Wife?_ She knew what Webster's offered as definitions but could she live the meanings of those terms? When she thought about herself in those terms, she seemed to either lose her grip on them or on herself. Her imagination had not gotten there yet.

Her life had been spent denying that she had a future, denying that she had a past. She had lived in _the mission present_ , an extended moment of her spy life that was like a lamplight in a dark room: she could see backward only a limited distance, forward only a limited distance, far enough in each case to do the job. No further. Further was frightening. But she had embraced the future, despite not knowing what it held for her, trusted it to hold Chuck, and that was good enough. The rest, terrifying in its way still, but not haunted or looming, just new and untravelled. _Terra incognita_. Terrifying but also exciting. Really exciting. She had a future, she was looking forward to tomorrow. She had a home. She felt like she was fully present on the planet, a caster of shadows, not a mere hider among them, akin to them. She was in the light.

Could she say those three words? Even in the light, could she believe enough of her own darkness gone to be worthy of those words, worthy of saying them at all, much less to this man who meant everything to her? But if she could feel them, how could she not say them, be worthy of saying them? It was time to let the worries about worthiness go. They wouldn't leave her all at once, she knew. But it was time to let them go.

Chuck loved her. He had been convinced that she was lovable through ups and downs, lefts and rights, harrowing discoveries and awful scenes. He had remained convinced through it all. Even in the recent nightmare of Hannah and Shaw and the Red Test, she now knew, he had never stopped believing that she was lovable, loving her. Just as she had never stopped believing it of him, loving him. They had both tried to stop believing, both wavered, but here they were, together, really together at last.

She needed to go slow. She was always slow catching up with herself.

As she closed her eyes, relaxing, hand-in-hand with Chuck, she thought of her violin, locked away still in Moscow. Donald Melden. For the first time since she had abandoned it in Leipzig, she felt like playing. She heard music as she drifted to sleep. Music from inside her and all around her.

ooOoo

When they landed, they went straight to Castle. All four of them, Morgan included. Beckman started the video debrief almost immediately. But Sarah could tell from the moment it started, that something fundamental had shifted. Beckman was Beckman, but there was an undertone of resignation, of acceptance, even of...apology.

Shaw. Beckman's poster boy for a good spy. Shaw had turned out to be unhinged, dangerous, rendered all the more dangerous because of the Swiss-cheese state of his soul, the one Beckman had treated as holy. But Chuck had been right about Shaw. Chuck had saved Shaw when Shaw would not have saved him. Chuck had defeated Shaw in Paris.

Shaw was Beckman's Waterloo. She would never admit it, but Beckman now knew this was Team Bartowski. _Bartowski._ Not just in name, not just out of convenience or necessity, but by right. This was Chuck's team.

When Beckman finally turned her attention to Sarah and Chuck, her manner portended reprimand. And although Sarah tried to shield Chuck and Chuck tried to shield her, each trying to make their honeymoon seem like her or his idea, Beckman cut right through it. She forced them to acknowledge it. And there, in Castle, Sarah was again able to speak.

"General, Chuck and I are dating." She took his hand. "Exclusively." _That's right, Chuck. Whatever happens tomorrow, and I am looking forward to tomorrow, you are it for me. There's no one else. There never has been, not really._

Chuck's smile lifted Sarah's heart higher. And Beckman finally conceded. "Between us, it's about damn time."

 _Between us, General, you have no fucking clue._

ooOoo

Sarah guided the Porsche back to Ellie's apartment, a dark missile, pushing it as fast as she could. She and Chuck and their luggage were all in the car. Chuck had forgotten Ellie was leaving, and they were trying to make it in time to see her.

Sarah squealed to a stop. Chuck started to get out but Sarah grabbed him. "I will give you two a minute alone. I can take the luggage to your place." She gave him a significant look and he smiled. Then he pulled a key off his key ring and handed it to her. Now, he gave her a significant look. They sat there for a second, not quite sure what to say or do, then she grabbed the key. He jumped from the car and began loping toward Ellie's. Sarah sat and looked at the apartment key. It felt simultaneously warm and heavy.

After a long time, she shook the spell of it off her and got out, grabbed the bags. She looked up and saw Ellie heading for her apartment. Sarah had missed her arrival while staring at the key. She wheeled the bags to the apartment and opened the door. She got them inside and she started to put the key on the counter. She held it for a minute longer then put it down. Slow.

She walked back to Chuck's room. She went inside. His bed. She had shared that bed with him, cover-shared it. It hit her that tonight she would share it with him. They would be in bed, not just at the same time, but together. They could make love there, soft and gentle or fierce and demanding, whatever they wanted and needed, and there were no cameras. (Casey told her as they deplaned that he would shut down all the bedroom surveillance. "Have a nice night, Walker." He had actually grinned at her.) Sarah sat down on the bed and let herself go for a moment; she sobbed her relief, her joy. After a couple of minutes, she gathered herself, washed her face, and headed over to Ellie's.

She was nervous about seeing Ellie. She had not been around much for a while, and Ellie knew about Hannah and knew Sarah had been seeing Shaw. Sarah had heard enough through surveillance to gather that Ellie was deeply disappointed. In Sarah. And in Chuck. Sarah knew Ellie had hoped for them for a long time, but that she had eventually lost faith in them ever being the couple she hoped they would be. Sarah took a deep breath and stepped up to the door.

Ellie was talking to Chuck. He had just told her that she was not leaving him alone. He looked toward Sarah with confidence and happiness that chased her nerves from her for a moment. Ellie asked if they were back together. "We're together." Sarah knew that he had omitted 'back' for her. She doubted Ellie heard the omission. But it was a gift from Chuck to her, an acknowledgment that despite the near-disaster between them, despite all that had happened, they had never really been apart.

Ellie followed Chuck to the door and stepped out of the apartment. She closed and locked the door. Chuck took Sarah's hand or she took his; she wasn't sure, she just approved of the result. Ellie noticed. She smiled but then she got an odd look in her eyes.

"Chuck, can you give us a minute. I'd like to talk to Sarah." Chuck looked at Ellie. Ellie pressed the question: "Okay?"

Chuck nodded and looked at Sarah. She nodded. He walked toward his apartment.

"So, Sarah Walker, are you _with_ Chuck?" She emphasized 'with' hard, the implication generally, if not specifically, obvious. Ellie waited.

"Yes, we are...back together."

"That's not an answer, Sarah Walker, and you know it."

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

Ellie huffed in undisguised annoyance. She was, Sarah realized, a little drunk from the party, still. "Look, Sarah Walker, if this conversation at any point involves the word 'complicated', I will _attack_ you. I don't know why, but I suspect attacking you would end badly for me, but you can bet, sister…" Ellie paused and grinned wildly for a second, "that I would get some shots in. Serious shots. You would know you'd been in a fight, believe you me."

"Ellie, have I done something to make you angry?"

"You mean, something other than jerking my brother back and forth - and, yes, I know that's a song - for almost three years, something other than consigning him to unrequited longing so visceral that my gut hurt for him, something other than never decisively breaking with your former boyfriend, whoever he was, something other than making my brother fake being happy, fake knowing things about you, fake believing you really cared for him. You mean, something other than _that_?" Ellie had gone incandescent, but she was also wobbling. "Something other than the most thorough job of stringing someone along since the ancient Greeks invented string? - and don't ask; Chuck and I used to play lots of _Trivial Pursuits_ \- you mean, something other than that?"

Sarah had been completely unprepared for that answer. She realized she must look like her goldfish, her mouth opening and closing but no sounds coming out.

Ellie paused for a second, stopped wobbling, then went on, her dudgeon higher still. "I don't know what's been going on. I don't. But I know I don't know what's been going on, you know?"

Sarah thought she understood, so she nodded.

"So, tell me one thing...sister. Do you love my brother?" Ellie paused again, her feet now apart, looking for all the world like she really was prepared to attack Sarah. Her free hand (her phone was in one hand) was balled into a fist.

Sarah stepped back one step and put her hands up, yielding. And then the words came. Not for Chuck, yet, but for Ellie. "Ellie, I love Chuck. I love Chuck. I love him. I love him like I love breathing. I love him beyond anything I knew to be possible. Yes, I love your brother." Her recent sobbing started again. And then Ellie did attack her - attack by roundhouse hug. She was in Ellie's arms and each was crying into the other's neck. They held each other for a moment, then Ellie pulled away, and wiped her eyes.

"I've been waiting a long time to hear you say those words, Sarah." She laughed, wiping her eyes again.

Sarah felt warm and cold at the same time. _Someone else has been waiting even longer, Ellie. But saying them to you is not the same as it would be to say them to him, happy as it makes me to say them to you._

"Thanks, Ellie. And, I am sorry, about all that other stuff. Really. I deserved what you said."

"Water under the bridge, Sarah, water under the bridge. I have to go; I'll miss my flight. I can go now. I know my baby brother really isn't alone. He's with the woman he was born to be with. Love you, Sarah."

Sarah's heart leaped. "Love you too, Ellie." Ellie hugged Sarah again quickly, then headed to the car.

Sarah wiped her eyes, walked to the fountain and sat down. It kept her company.

The Fount of Curses. No.

The Fount of Blessings. Yes.

The bubbling of the water sounded like laughter, musical laughter, not like crying.

Sarah sat there for a few minutes, hugging herself, listening, before going to Chuck. To his room. To his bed. To their bed.

* * *

 **A/N2** Cue Nina Simone, "Feeling Good". Play it a couple of times.

I always wondered where Sarah was when Chuck was in Ellie's apartment, why she shows up after Ellie's arrival. There are lots possible of explanations, but this was mine.

Tune in next time for Chapter 40, "New Traditionalists (Three): Spy Family?"

And, hey, Whitman's poetry is public domain. Yay!


	40. New Traditionalists (Three)

**A/N1** It's about damn time! Our long-suffering heroine is in a good place. This is a reflective chapter. Sarah thinks her way through S3-ending events, trying to take stock of herself, consolidate her gains, and move forward into the future.

An important non-canon conversation is featured.

If you remember, our first chapter title (way, way back) was "Okay to Good?" The question mark was stationed there for obvious reasons (as thirty-some chapters have shown) but Sarah has at long last been able to remove the question mark, to arrive at good. She has more changes to undergo, more struggles with herself (some serious) ahead, but she has found the light.

The overarching question of our story sequence now becomes: _having found the light, is it possible for Sarah to abandon or lose it, or forget it?_

This is a long and (to use a word of Sarah's that she uses here) _talky_ chapter. As we all know, the show shifts gears after Paris, reorients itself. Sarah is doing that here but to do it she needs to address herself - in a number of senses. Bear with her. (Bear with me.)

Action recommences in the next story.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FORTY

 _New Traditionalists (Part Three)_ :

 _Spy Family_

* * *

Why is love rich beyond all other possible human experiences and a sweet burden to those seized in its grasp? Because we become what we love and yet remain ourselves.

-Martin Heidegger

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree  
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;  
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.  
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see  
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be  
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

\- Gerard Manley Hopkins

* * *

Part One: Face-Off

* * *

 _Family_.

The word had been on Sarah's mind, occupying her thoughts.

She and Chuck had gone to sleep listening to the song he found for her, the one he thought would be her favorite song. She loved it. And hearing it then, there, in their bed, after all that had happened.

 _I am feeling good. Good. I am good here. Good._

She and Chuck had dozed for a while, but the jetlag and excitement caught up with them in a strange mixture. They made love as slowly as they possibly could, lingering over every touch, every caress, every movement. Moving with deliberate care, they explored each other completely, inch-by-loving-inch, and the exploring came to its culmination just as the sun came up.

They fell asleep again in the morning light.

 _The sun is but a morning star. There is more day to dawn. -Yes, Jill, I went and read Thoreau. Another book I read during these long, dark months. Parts of it, anyway. A little talky for me..._

Sarah woke up a couple of hours later. The word _family_ was in her head. She knew that part of the reason was the conversation with Ellie. Two things had happened in that conversation that were still on Sarah's mind.

She had told Ellie that she loved Chuck, and she had told Ellie she loved her.

She did love Ellie. She had loved her as a sister for a long time. She had not known quite how to say that to herself, but it was true. _Sister._ That was the word Ellie had harped on during her sudden harpy routine. Sarah was with Chuck. _Yes, Ellie, I am. Exclusively._ And she was part of this family that had come to mean so much to her.

She was so happy about that she felt like jumping up and down on the bed. _A family. A home._ Things taken from her by her father and systematically denied to her by Graham, by the spy life. But here she was, in Burbank, in her lover's bed - her boyfriend's bed, their bed - with an adopted and adopting sister, and she was still a spy. Spies fall in love. Spies have families. She did not claim to know how this was going to work, but she knew she was committed to making it work.

 _Committed_. That is what Ellie was asking with 'with', why she emphasized that word, why she highlighted evidence of Sarah apparent non-commitment over the past three years.

Sarah listened to Chuck's regular breathing and moved her feet over to his to warm them.

 _Commitment._ Her life had been about movement, change. Rootless. About keeping her regrets and pain, her confusion and guilt from shattering her, reducing her to nothing. Over the last three years, largely because of the man in bed beside her, but also because of Molly and her mom, Casey and Ellie and Devon and Morgan, she had let so much of all that go, faced it as best she could and turned herself toward doing better, being better.

 _Rooted. I am good here._

She had changed. She killed, executed, killed Mauser: but she had changed. She had changed and was still changing. Plate tectonics, slow, ponderous, but real.

 _Become what you are, Sarah, from darkness on to glory and on still to glory. All my life, people have tried to make me become what I am not. But I didn't do it. I resisted. I am still here. Sarah is here and she is not shattered and she has a future. I am good here. I have family here. Chuck believes in my unrealized but realizable self. I believe in it too. I am realizing it right now, little by little._

It bothered her that she had told Ellie she loved Chuck before she told him. She knew Ellie; she would not take it to be her place to tell that to Chuck. And of course, if she did, it would not be the same. Only Sarah could say those words the way Chuck wanted to hear them.

Sarah had kind of told him. Carina had told him. He knew it. The problem was saying the words to him. To say them to the man she loved was to do more than report on a feeling, it was to open herself up fully to her future and the changes she was undergoing. She wanted to do both of those. She was on her way to doing them both. How she felt about him was in every movement of her body in their bed, every tremulous reaction, every sigh, and scream. She just needed to say the words.

Chuck was trying not to pressure her, she knew. He had not said the words many times in Paris or on the train. _He is so sweet to me._ But she knew that as much as he wanted to _hear_ them, he also wanted to _say_ them. He was so full of love for her. _So full!_ When he first told her four times in Castle, he was happy just to say the words, relieved and satisfied. She knew she would be too. She wanted him to hear the words from her and she wanted him to say them to him. She wanted them both to be free to hear and say the words.

But wording her experiences, her feelings, especially to others, to the others for whom she had the feelings, that had always been hard for her. She had been taught not to do it. Taught that it was dangerous, wrong. Naive, if nothing else. The words she had been taught were the wrong words or colorless, euphemistic replacements for the right ones.

As a girl, she had adopted her Dad's talk of 'adventures' instead of just saying that she loved him and wanted to be with him. Of course, he taught her that replacement, since he could not say that he loved her and wanted her to be with him. Somehow, that apparently trivial euphemism had gotten Sarah trapped in adventure her whole life. She liked adventure, sure, but not the sort of adventures her life contained: cons and terminations. She was ready for the adventure of loving Chuck, being his girlfriend, his _partner_...in a sense of that term that was not merely professional, but existential, complete, the sense of a shared life. And knowing Chuck, that would be all the adventure she needed. _I love you, Chuck._

Sarah dozed back off.

ooOoo

But their next adventure was not the three words, despite Sarah's continuing struggle to say them. Their next adventure, the next mission, involved a spy couple, the Turners.

Shaw had been Beckman's Waterloo. And Beckman was changing her tactics. Accepting that Chuck and Sarah were a couple, and hoping to give them role models, she took advantage of the Turners being in town. Sarah and Chuck were to watch the Turners, learn from them.

Other than her brief partnership with Bryce, Sarah had been exposed really to exactly two relationships. Her father and mother, and Ellie and Devon.

Her partnership with Bryce had done one thing for her: it made her aware that there could be more between a woman and a man than she had with Bryce, much more. During that relationship, she had hoped for more but it never materialized. Neither she nor Bryce was, at the time, capable of anything more, though Sarah had been willing to try. Bryce's death saddened her. She had cared for him and she would have liked to know he had a chance to find something real for himself; she would have liked to hope he might find something like what she had found. She was not sure he could have done it or would have wanted it for himself, but she would have liked to hope for him. Still, her time with Bryce had largely only provided her with negative lessons, a bad example.

She now knew that there was a story behind her parent's troubles that she had not understood as a girl - namely, her mother's struggle with depression. But other than a few warm but hazy memories from her earliest remembered times, her memories of her parents' relationship was full of negative lessons too. Failures of communication, failures of presence. That all worried Sarah. She knew she struggled with communication, struggled to be fully present, self-divided as she was.

Ellie and Devon had given her much to think about since the beginning of her time in Burbank. Although Carina's arrival had interrupted her reflections, Sarah had pondered that game of _Likewise_ that she and Chuck had played with them (and Morgan) early in her time there. Sarah had hated the falsity of her interactions with Chuck and with them, but especially because there was so much openness, so much mutuality between Ellie and Devon. They knew things about each other, they knew each other, and they delighted in that knowledge. At the time, that had terrified Sarah, the thought of being known.

 _Honestly, that has always been the source of my of my terror, much of my anger. My certainty that if I were known, I would be weighed, measured and found wanting, first by myself, and then by others. I have lived in terror of self-knowledge. Yes, I wanted Chuck to stay in the damn car, yes, he risked himself for me, for Casey, for others, and it made me crazy, but most of it was his efforts to know me that both terrified me and charmed me. And his strength to face what I was like - am still like - and to face what I have been, that slowly gave me the strength to face those things too. He couldn't do them for me, but he loved me until I could begin to do them for myself._

During their fight about the bachelor party, they had found a path through the pain and hurt feelings and had gotten past it. They were resilient. They believed in what they had and they were willing to make sacrifices to keep it. They put _them_ first. The trip to Africa was another case.

The Turners turned out to be good for little except a bad example themselves. Petty, jealous, resentful. He was a philanderer, she a drunkard, and that seemed an old spiral between them - the behavior of the one worsening the behavior of the other. Chuck was initially starstruck. Sarah was worried. Chuck became worried too.

The worries might not have been so bad if it hadn't been for the key. Sarah had known it was coming; she saw it coming the night they got back from Paris and he took the apartment key off his key ring so she could use it. It had felt warm and heavy in her hand. When Chuck offered her the key and asked her to move in, she froze. She had known it was coming and she froze. She thought of the bed she had spent the night in, made love in, as _theirs._ And still, she froze.

She froze because it was the normalization she knew Chuck wanted and that she wanted, but that also terrified her. She had lived alone, in effect, since she left the Farm. The time with the CATs was as close to an exception as she had, and her time with Bryce, but neither of those had really been _living_ with someone else. They had been partners or roommates, but they did not share a home. That is what Chuck was asking her to do. Share his home, make it hers. She wanted that desperately. But her old difficulty of not wanting what she wanted gripped her. She wanted to take the key and kiss Chuck and drag him back to bed. Instead, she told him they were not a normal couple. They had a minor spat about weapons in the apartment.

But that spat was emblematic, or the guns were. She had lived for about thirteen years with guns and knives, weapons, as her only constant companions. Chuck wanted her to live with him, not with them, her cold comforters, carrion comforters. Death. Weapons.

It was not that she wanted to live with weapons, although the thought of being more than thirty feet from one made her anxious ( _old habits, deep habits, staying-alive habits_ ). It was that she knew that moving in would be to remove the walls, the _literal_ walls, behind which she had for so long hidden from Chuck. Their separate apartments were an outward, visible sign of her self-divisions, her inner, crossword-puzzle labyrinth. To move in with Chuck would be to get rid of the walls, the divisions, the separations, to have nothing to hide behind.

She did not want to hide from Chuck. _I don't._ But she did not know how to stop hiding from herself if she stopped hiding from him.

That was the problem. Facing herself. Ending the hide-and-seek with Sarah.

She was doing it but it was going to take time. There was so much to face, so much to acknowledge and own and find a way past. To get to her future with Chuck she had to get past her past.

That process had started in the Christmas tree lot with Mauser.

It had continued, although Sarah did not fully understand how, in her mud bath, her day of awakening to the truth of herself, her feelings for Chuck. The day she owned her love for him.

It had continued, in a darkened form, in the run-up to Prague and after their failure to run. It had continued in her struggle with what was happening to Chuck, a representation of her own compromises and forfeitures over the years.

It had continued with the Red Test, reliving her own and taking herself to have lived through ( _died through_ ) Chuck's. Even that awful night at Shaw's, when she...When _that_ happened, when she ( _face it_ ) slept with a man she did not want and who only believed he wanted her.

It had continued when she confronted the melancholy fact that there was only one man she wanted and she could not have him.

Through all of that, misunderstandings, mistakes, missteps, small and great, she had slowly been forced to look Sarah in the face. The part of her that was free, that hoped, the part of her that had become all of her, demanded a self-reckoning.

But the inner divisions were walled, old, fortified, thick.

Agent Walker had resigned, yes, but she still walked Sarah's inner walls, S&W in one hand, a combat knife in another. Sarah could not batter the walls down, overthrow them by main force. Like a besieging army facing daunting ramparts, and deadly, weaponed opposition, she was going to have to try to tunnel beneath the walls, collapse them under Agent Walker. She needed time and Chuck ( _I love him_ ) wanted to move at pace, at a normal pace. Normal. But that was not a pace at which Sarah could move, not yet.

Slow. Slow. So much to do and so much to undo. She galled herself. She wanted to speed up the pace of her changes, but she could not simply will them faster.

Rome was not unbuilt in a day.

ooOoo

Still, it turned out part of the wall collapsed more quickly than Sarah could have anticipated. The Turners, strangely, were a help.

The Turners were a mess. Petty, hurtful, twisted by their own vices and by their long involvement in the spy life. It was hard not to look at them and worry about her future with Chuck. Adding in her refusal really to talk about moving in and the pointless spat, and their possible Turner's future seemed to threaten to become a possible Turner's present. Was that, the mess of the Turners, what the future had in store for them? After all they had gone through, all they had suffered for each other, would they collapse under the weight of their issues and the spy life? _Maybe spies shouldn't fall in love, even though they do._

She and Chuck finally discussed it. She asked him, as directly as she could, moved by the gallstone misery of the Turners, if Chuck thought _that_ was their future. He told her no. He believed in the strength of what they had. Sarah saw it again: Chuck's determination to hold onto himself and to hold onto them despite the ravages of the spy life, his determination to find another path through it. Sarah realized she had come to share his determination, to find a path through it. They would get to normal together, at least when their spy life finally ended, and they would do it by adopting a little normal now.

She took the key. She moved in. _I want what I want._

 _Or part of it._ She just could not unpack. Or tell Chuck she loved him.

Rome was not unbuilt in a day.

But a section of the wall had collapsed.

ooOoo

She had only gotten settled - as much as she could still living out of her suitcase - when the Intersect forced itself into Sarah's thoughts with a new urgency. Chuck started having strange, Intersected dreams. The dreams, jumbled and wavering, still arrived for Chuck with the force of his flashes. He believed them. At first, she had wondered if his oddnesses were connected with her inability to tell him she loved him. She fretted that maybe he was upset with her, disappointed in her, in them. In her glacial pace. She froze anytime he told her he loved her. She tried to cover the freeze, but she knew he could see it and she knew it hurt him. She also knew he was angry at himself for letting her see the hurt. But that made it all worse.

Chuck told Beckman about his flash. She refused to believe it. Chuck did of course, and despite being sent to a CIA psychiatrist, Dr. Dreyfus, he was not dissuaded. The doctor, it turned out, removed him from active duty.

Sarah's faith in Chuck was put to the test. He took Morgan on an unauthorized mission in response to his dream flash. He was trying to stop Dr. Kowambe, identified in the dream flash as targeting his king, King Kuti of Zambibia, for assassination. Chuck was convinced it was a Ring plot.

After Sarah got him near the King and his party, Chuck physically attacked Kowambe, dislodging a tooth. He insisted to Sarah that the tooth was fake, that it contained Ring intel. She tested it. It was just a tooth. Telling him that was one of the hardest things she had ever done. He had been put in a facility by Beckman, who feared what he might do if left on his own. Sarah had not been able to prevent it, and she was worried about him too, so she was not sure she should prevent it.

She tested the tooth and it was just a tooth. And for the first time, she began to fear the Intersect actively. She trusted Chuck, but she did not trust it or what it was doing to him. The 'mistake' was the fault of the Intersect. But Chuck took it to be his mistake and seemed to fear that Sarah no longer trusted him. His condition seemed to be worse but he remained sure that his flashes, dream or no, were trustworthy.

Sarah knew this was one of Chuck's deepest insecurities, his fear that he had a place in her life only because of the Intersect and that her attraction to him was rooted in what it allowed him to do, to be. That was false. _How could he still think that?_ The Intersect only mattered to her because it mattered to Chuck, affected him and put him in danger. But she no more thought it was integral to him, to what he loved, it was no more what she loved that his Nerd Herder pocket protector was. Chuck never seemed to get that she did not think of him as the Intersect and never had. _For that matter, I have never - except jokingly - thought of him as a nerd. That's his term, not mine, never mine. He's Chuck. My Chuck._

Sarah began to worry that she could lose Chuck, not bodily perhaps, but lose his mind. That the Intersect would do what countless missions and the US government, Fulcrum and the Ring could not do, defeat Chuck Bartowski.

Her fears became so intense that she had to see Chuck, had to talk to him, had to find a strategy for saving him. She went to Dr. Dreyfus to plead for a visit, a chance to save him, the man she loved. And, as she had with Ellie, she managed to say to Dreyfus what she had not managed to say to Chuck. "I love him." He was precious to her past all valuing. Dreyfus had consented. It turned out Casey had the same idea. He was there, at Dreyfus' also pleading for Chuck.

It turned out that Chuck was right, the flashes were right. Sarah and Casey and Dreyfus arrived in time to keep Kowambe from killing Chuck. When Chuck saw her, the look of thanks on his face broke her heart. "You came for me." _I will always come for you, Chuck._ She managed to say that out loud.

When Chuck got released by Dreyfus, Sarah was waiting for him, overcome with impatience. Waiting to catch up with herself had nearly made it the case that she lost Chuck without saying the words to him.

Why were they so hard to say? Because they were a deed, an action, not just a report on the state of her feelings. To say those words was to tunnel under more sections of wall, to make it harder to hide from herself. It was to force Agent Walker to fall back to other walls. To let Chuck further into herself than Sarah had yet been. She was no longer a spy, not in the sense she had been. That sort of spy had to be nothing but a spy, had to give up on a future except as a future was a function of a current mission. But everything, time itself, remained internal to the mission.

Except, now, Sarah. She _was_ thinking about her future, and not in mission terms. Putting her imagination to work on it. Her imagination, she now better understood, was laggard. Unlike most people's, it ran behind her reality, not out in front of it.

She had been afraid of her imagination for so long. Her reality was so fearsome that she was quelled by the thought of the monsters her imagination might create. So she did not use it, left it alone, uncharged. But she was past the corpse dream. She was facing her past, her dead. She was becoming someone new, not just a new spy, but a new woman. She was profoundly sorry about her past, but she was not going to spend her life in apologies or regrets. She was going to live whatever life was left to her, much or little, and live it in her home with Chuck, the man she now told that she loved him. At last, at last, free at last. Free to imagine.

"I love you, Chuck." _I should have said it so long ago. But I get to say it now, and I will keep saying it._

She dragged Chuck to their bed and she said it to him there, with Chuck deep inside her, body and soul.

* * *

Part Two: Family Difficulties

* * *

 _Family._

It was still on Sarah's mind when Shaw rose from the dead. Or his ghost began to haunt them. The Intersect started to insist on him.

Chuck's flash dreams foretold it. And Shaw or Shaw's ghost rose slowly. Unpleasantly.

Stephen Bartowski was back and doubtful of Sarah's dating Chuck, worried that she was still only cover dating him. Chuck hid his dreams from Sarah, both because he wanted more proof and because he was...Chuck. Worried about Shaw, about what his reanimation might mean. From Sarah's point of view, it meant nothing personal. He intended to kill Sarah. He might have killed Chuck. He had ceased to matter for her as anything but a spy when she decided to run with Chuck.

She was happy that if Chuck was right, he would then be free of guilt for having taken a life, but she felt nothing for Shaw. She had never felt anything for Shaw that was not a product of depression and wishful thinking. She had tried to feel something but it had not worked.

Casey, partly to out of meanness, partly because he may have seen that they had yet to really put all of those dark days behind them, forced Sarah to reveal what happened during her time with Shaw in DC. He never got her to say that they slept together, but it was hanging in the air like a cold mist, making everyone (except Casey, perhaps) uncomfortable.

They went to DC, to Shaw's penthouse apartment, to see what they could find. Sarah tried to hide it, her embarrassment and her distaste for that return, but they had no choice. They did not find Shaw, but someone was there, a Ring agent, after Shaw's spy will. They were able to get it from him. It suggested that Chuck's dream was not really prophetic; Shaw was dead, after all.

But Shaw was alive in their apartment or haunting it - there somehow - when they finally got home after the trip. They had gone to bed, but they were both staring at the ceiling, tense, uneasy. Sarah rolled toward Chuck and slipped her feet between his. He put gentle pressure on her feet with his own but did not roll toward her. She knew she had to do something.

Sarah got up from the bed and put on her robe. She couldn't talk to Chuck about this in their bed, could not talk about it without herself covered. She took his hand and pulled him up gently. Morgan was asleep in his room. She walked Chuck to the couch and motioned for him to sit down.

"That stuff in Castle. With Casey. About Shaw. Our time in DC. I need to talk to you about that. You know I know about Hannah. And I know you said you didn't need to know about...this. But you do. Or, rather, I need you to know."

Chuck's gaze was open, vulnerable. It made Sarah desperate to avoid the topic, made her wish fervently that she had not made the mistakes she had made. But she had. They both had. And they needed to clear the air after Casey had kicked up so much dust.

"The day Casey was describing. I did spend that day with him, Chuck. Couples massages. Elaborate meals. Shaw bought me those earrings. I kept them because I liked them. Not because they were a _keepsake_ …" Her throat closed on her. That was true, but it had to sound false.

"It's okay, Sarah. I still have a couple of computer gadgets Hannah gave me. A book about the Eiffel Tower. I didn't throw them away. I liked them. The Eiffel Tower belongs to you now, and if I look at that book, it would bring you to mind, not her. And Shaw was going to kill you; that undoes the _keepsake_ notion..."

"Thank you for that, Chuck. I certainly don't wear the earrings thinking of Shaw. I wear them despite him. I like how they look and...you seem to like how they look on me..."

He grinned, cautiously, since he knew the discussion was not over. "I do. And you should wear them whenever you want. We weren't officially together then, Sarah, I had no claim on you."

Sarah was not sure how to go on. But Chuck spoke again. "I brought donuts to Castle - after...Hannah. I was so mixed up about what I had done, about my feelings, I believed I was happy, and I knew I wasn't...and I...I don't know what the hell I was doing. I was an _ass. I don't deserve it, but can you forgive me?_ "

He reached over to her, lifted her chin. Her skin was flushed, she could feel it, and she had tears in her eyes, she could only see him in liquid form. Those donuts had cut her, his attitude that morning, sugar like salt in an open wound. - But she was not going to make this about him. She had gotten past those moments. She wanted Chuck to get past this one.

"Yes, Chuck, I forgive you. I have forgiven you. But that day with Shaw, Chuck, it ended with me sleeping with him."

 _There. I said it. Oh, God, I said it._

Chuck's face reddened. But the vulnerability in his eyes increased; it did not decrease. His gaze softened; it did not harden.

He started to speak but he was choked up. He waited for a moment then tried again. His voice was hoarse with emotion.

"Sarah, I'm not going to presume to understand everything, to know all you were going through. But I went through my version of it too. I was in love with you but telling myself I wasn't, because I couldn't be. I said that to Morgan in Castle when the Ring guys captured us down there. But of course, I _could be_ in love with you, because I _was_ in love with you.

"I was...with Hannah for all the wrong reasons, and I have spent a lot of time wishing that night away, not mainly for my sake but for yours - and hers too. I hurt you; I hurt her. I hurt myself. I hurt Hannah again when I ended it but I did it because I knew you were the one.

"I can't get you out of my system, Sarah Walker, out of my head or my heart. You are closer to me than the Intersect, closer to me than _me_. I can't take my betrayal of all that back, but I can own it and tell you now, face-to-face, how sorry I am. I am yours, exclusively. Never doubt that, please. I will never give you a reason."

Sarah pulled Chuck to her. She put her mouth to his ear, choked and whispering, tears streaming down her face. "I'm sorry, Chuck. I was so depressed. So defeated. I thought I had lost you. Worse, I thought you had lost yourself. I thought you were gone, not just from me but from the world, the you I knew and loved and celebrated. None of that makes what I did okay but…"

"No, Sarah, love, that's enough." He pulled back to look in her eyes. "We both did things out of despondency that we regret. You forgive me. I forgive you. I want us both also to forget. As far as I am concerned, I was never with a woman until Paris."

"Me too, Chuck."

When he gave her a wet-but-smirking look, she swatted him as she wiped her eyes. "You know what I mean. You were the first man I ever _made love to_ , Chuck Bartowski. The very first."

"Me too, Sarah."

She swatted him again, but she could not help chuckling in the midst of her tears.

He kissed her on the mouth, lingering there, her tears on both their lips, then he picked her up and carried her back to their bed.

ooOoo

That was the end of Shaw as a presence in their personal lives.

But he was alive after all ( _of course_ ) and he had plans for them. Revenge. Ellie got pulled into the spy life. She found out that Devon had known for a long time.

Sarah and Chuck and a rebooted Intersect defeated Shaw and the Ring, but the cost was so steep. Shaw murdered Stephen, murdered Chuck's dad, in front of Chuck, and it turned out, in front of Ellie.

Sarah's focus throughout was on Chuck, on the threat of his Intersect to him. Yes, Shaw was a threat too, but Sarah knew ( _knew: she had never had a moment of doubt about it_ ) who the better man was; even in the midst of his struggles with the Intersect, Chuck was more than Shaw, more than an Intersected Shaw, more than any possible version of Shaw. Chuck was _great,_ a great-souled man. Shaw was a broken spy, diminished further by loss and obsession and the Intersect. Chuck had resisted Shaw's attempts to break him in Burbank and he had bested him in Paris. He bested him in Burbank too.

Ellie, broken by grief about Stephen, demanded that Chuck give up the spy life. Her demands were even more insistent as she came to realize that Chuck was following in his father's footsteps. Just as Stephen had been _some kind of_ spy his entire life, so Chuck was _becoming some kind of_ spy. Not the kind Sarah feared and not the kind his dad was. Chuck was becoming a spy of his own kind. A new traditionalist. Sarah remained curious to know what that was, but she understood Chuck's inability to refuse Ellie. Ellie's fear was too fresh, too visceral.

Stephen had given Chuck the governor, so the Intersect was no longer the parasite within it had been, but that, welcome though it was, - that was a small thing in the wave of grief that swept over the family. Sarah spent hours with Ellie. and hours with Chuck. Beckman gave them all some time.

Sarah hugged Ellie's tears away often and talked to her even more. Sarah held Chuck, weeping for him and weeping with him. They spent evenings at _Pressing and Grinding_ and in the privacy of the Listening Room, Sarah listened: Chuck told her more about his childhood, about his dad. Even i-Jodi seemed to understand that something was wrong. She kept her stink eye to herself.

A few times, Sarah cried alone. She had never known this sort of grief, never suffered with family before. Never known the absoluteness of their shared loss. She was part of their grief. She grieved. She was part of the family.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time. We leap forward into S4.

There will be two stories in my treatment of S4: "Darkened Engagements" and "For Whom the Bell Tolls". You can guess the foci.

After that, there will be one long story in my treatment of S5: "Decoupling".

The entire sequence of stories will end with a post-finale story or two, a short _Book Three:_ _Sarah vs. Emptiness._

Hope folks stick around for a _Charahful_ ending. (You didn't think I would put you through this for nothing?)

Zettel


	41. Darkened Engagements (One)

**A/N1** Welcome back.

That was the longest break between active story chapters for me here. I hope folks are still around and interested to see how this story sequence ends.

I needed a break from the effort of imagination and will on this project, and I guessed my readers could use one too.

To an extent, our story starts over here. Things have reoriented for our heroine, she has undergone a transvaluation of values, as it were. She has changed; her world has changed. But she is still a spy - of some kind - as is Chuck. Bear with me as we ease back into the story.

A tricky chapter to write, this one.

Unlike some fans, I rate S4 the best of the show, and by a considerable margin. The writers, after the meandering misery of S3 (I will have a final bit to say about S3 beneath an upcoming chapter), got it together and discovered (!) that a couple's getting together is not the end of the couple's story, but rather begins _a new part_ of their story - after all, _staying together is a continual process of getting together._ (Anyone who has had a long relationship knows that to be true.)

Yes, the season is one long proposal, _but so what_?

I like the proposal. I take its length to make sense, given the hurdles crossed to get there and the hurdles still to cross. The whole show has been about _a ring_ \- not the spy organization, but one of the ones on the cover of the book Chuck takes as a guide to communication. The ring Sarah will eventually wear. There is no doubt that one of the deepest and most fascinating ideas of the show is its thematization of rings, of marriage and commitment. The show was headed in this direction from very early on, despite the wanderings of S3.

Nonetheless, despite my rating of S4, I am going to fast-forward through its early episodes. I will touch on events I take to be of importance to Sarah but will move expeditiously to what I take to be the defining moments of the season. That is tricky: I like so many of the episodes through which I fast-forward.

If you reflect on the show, you will see that it constantly threatens Chuck and Sarah with the possibility of being separated: that threat is actually the _Big Bad_ (if you will allow some _Buffy_ terminology) of the entire show, the overarching villain of its overarching plot. (One problem with the finale is that it gives too much to the villain - but more on that in due course.)

S4 presents that threat memorably, in two moments: _one,_ when it takes Chuck from Sarah, and _two,_ when it has Sarah leave Chuck to save Mary Bartowski (though Sarah does not intend her leaving to be permanent, she risks it being so).

Starting with this chapter, "Darkened Engagements", focuses on those two moments, and on their consequences for our heroine. Much of the story will be non-canon, although the non-canon material will start in earnest in the chapter after this one.

This chapter, not lengthy, is mostly interior scene-setting, giving a sense of where Sarah is when she heads to Thailand…Think of it as preludial.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

 _Darkened Engagements (Part One)_ :

 _Since You're Gone_

* * *

Since you're gone  
The nights are gettin' strange  
Since you're gone  
Well, nothing's makin' any sense  
Since you're gone  
I stumbled in the shade  
Since you're gone  
Everything's in perfect tense…

\- The Cars, _Since You're Gone_

* * *

Sarah's problems started with Frost.

Chuck's mother had made it home.

And unmade home. A little. A lot.

It was Frost's fault, but it was not all her fault. Maybe.

Carina had made an Ice Queen joke years ago, about Sarah's commonly chilly reaction to men in clubs the CATs visited, a joke about watching the hoar frost grip the Ice Queen. The joke had not seemed funny to Sarah at the time and it did not later. Still. But drop the 'hoar': keep the _Frost_ , the woman was the mother of the man Sarah loved; she created problems for everyone, Chuck, Ellie, and Sarah. Frost, her future mother-in-law. _Monster-in-law_. Frost. Agent Frost. The Ice Queen before the Ice Queen, frozen from long, long ago. The Ice Age.

Chuck's mother turned out to be a spy - _of course_. A spy of the sort that Sarah understood, a spy of the sort that Sarah had been. Well, of the general sort Sarah had been. But there was that strange relationship - years-long, decades-long - between Frost and Alexei Volkoff, the Russian arms dealer. Frost had captured Sarah and Chuck, and saved the two of them too, all with Volkoff. Frost left with Volkoff.

But as if that were not confusing enough, Frost had chosen to suppress the Intersect. That started Chuck on a spiral more serious than Sarah fully understood, not until it was too late.

Sarah thought she understood Frost to some degree.

Frost had not been able to give up the spy life, even though she had a family, a husband she loved and two children she adored. She had worried about the spy life tainting them, but still, she could not let go of it. She clung to it until it did what she feared: drove her husband into near-psychotic distraction and obsession, and cost Frost her children.

She got in too deep with Volkoff and could not surface until he and his network had been destroyed. But Frost alone, one woman in Volkoff's constant company and iced inside Russia, she had been forced to bide her time. To bide a long, long time. Sarah had no idea what compromises Frost had been forced to make to hold her place in Volkoff's life and affections. That Frost loved her family had become clear. She was willing to do almost anything, maybe anything, to keep them safe. _I get that._

Frost suppressed the Intersect, Sarah thought, to try to keep Chuck from coming after her, from trying to save her. She had chosen to return to her life with Volkoff to safeguard Ellie and Chuck. Sarah wondered, though, if Frost's old inability to leave the spy life had also been playing a role in her choice. Still. After all these years. After all the misery. _That scares me too._

ooOoo

Sarah was having her own problems letting features of the spy life go. Chuck was now part of the spy life, so she could not let it go altogether. But features, vestiges of it, she wanted to be done with.

She wanted to. Really she did. But vestiges of her old life, of the old Sarah, still were clinging to her and were proving hard to scrape off, barnacles, manacles.

There had been her continued inability to unpack. She did not know how to explain it to Chuck; she wasn't sure she could explain it to herself.

It was not that she was uncommitted to him, dithering, conflicted. No. She was committed. It was that she did not understand how to live otherwise, other than living the spy life. Being committed was, Sarah found and was finding, different in kind than having a mission.

Part of her knew that, knew how different the future was when there was no mission and when there was a mission. Missions not only put boundaries on time, but they also put boundaries on people: roles were well-defined and they changed only as the mission dictated, in rule-governed ways. _I learned the rules at the Farm. I kept the rules. Until Budapest, until Burbank, until Chuck._

But relationships were not like that, were not like mission-defined roles. A commitment was not like that. Being Chuck's girlfriend was infinitely more complicated than it would have been if she were his handler (not that she had ever been that, or that things between them had ever been simple).

Being his girlfriend was _undefined in front._ _Ok, Jill, another term from Thoreau._ It was not rule-governed. It could turn into something more at any time or end at any time: changes were not mission-dictated. Life was not a mission; it could not be controlled, manipulated.

To be committed was to be vulnerable to surprise, to unexpected change, to life-altering moments. And the response to those was not scripted, dictated by a cover or a goal. Sarah had to respond; she had to make choices, not in response to orders or a list, but in response to her own heart. She was getting better at listening to that long-ignored organ, understanding it, but some things were still lost in translation or uttered too softly for Sarah to hear distinctly. _As I once said 'Lisa' to Chuck._

She was not afraid of commitment: she did not fully understand it, did not understand how it worked. She was learning. That did not mean she was not committed or had doubts. It did mean that she was feeling her way along, trying to go slow, walking with her hands out in front of her. Her life had been so strange for so long, so bizarrely structured for so long, so rule-governed for so long ( _lists, files, plans_ ): her new freedom was wonderful but also plagued by something like agoraphobia - the open spaces of her new life made her dizzy. _Vertigo._

She did not want to stay in the dark confines of spy missions but she was blinking and stumbling as she adjusted to a life unstructured by missions, as she adjusted to her new role. As she adjusted to the thought of moving her life out of the dark confines of her suitcase.

 _Her suitcase_.

Inside that suitcase was the picture she had been carrying for a long time, the one she had put there when she thought she would have to leave him behind, the one she had wept over that awful night in DC. Chuck was home. Her unpacking was not a sign that she was not sure about that. She was. She had been, even if she had not known to put it in those words, for ages, maybe since that morning on the beach. Chuck was home. But she had never had a home, had no idea how to be _at home. But he is mine._ That interior pocket was Sarah's Holy of Holies - her sacred ground. Chuck had been there for a long time.

It had taken her a while, but she did eventually unpack. But that led to more changes.

Almost immediately. Chuck talked - dreamily, wistfully, not intending to pressure her - about marriage and kids. It was not the first time those thoughts had been in Sarah's mind, not by a long shot, but it was the first time Chuck had said those exact words to her, or at least the first time since they were possible, really possible. Her future could contain such things. She could become Chuck's wife, the mother of his children. She was beginning to bring herself and those ideas together - but that did not mean she was ready for them to be realized yet.

She had been struggling to wrap her mind and heart around those possibilities, their possible... _eventual?_...realization...when Heather Chandler fell back into her life. _Heather Chandler._

Heather ended up in Castle and she discovered that Chuck and Sarah were together. She began to poke at them, not really affecting Chuck but hitting Sarah verbally over and over again. She went right to Sarah's fear - not to a fear of commitment, but of whether she was someone who could live any kind of normal life. Sarah's fear that despite everything, she was herself a version of Heather Chandler, or anyway fated to be Heather Chandler. Heather could not be a wife or a mother, and she did not take that to be a loss.

Heather had been married to a more-or-less ordinary guy, but it had been a fake, not real. Her provocations made Sarah wonder if she, Sarah, was capable of real, as real as Chuck's talk of marriage and family. _Can I be that real_? She was trying; she was making progress. But she wanted to be fair to Chuck. She did not want him to hope for something she could not really give him. _Something I cannot really give myself?_

But as that night wore on, Sarah found out that she was not Heather Chandler. She was not Heather (and she was not Jill, she was not Carina), she was Sarah Walker. Carina had told her long ago not to let anyone have the last word on Sarah but Sarah.

Sarah was not fated to be Heather Chandler. Sarah still occasionally had a hard time knowing the thoughts in her own head, a hard time feeling her own feelings, wanting what she wanted, but Heather clarified the differences between them. Sarah did want those things, the things Chuck was talking about, the things Heather ridiculed. Sarah even wanted to want them. But she knew she was not ready yet to have them. She was moving at a pace toward them that surprised her, but she did not want to get her own hopes up, or Chuck's. She was happy, so happy, just being in love with him. Just being in love was so much more than she ever expected. She was still learning how to be Chuck's girlfriend. They needed to go slow.

She was leaning that love is not static. It is alive: changing, constantly renewed and reacquired, a daunting, mysterious combination of grace and struggle. It changes - or it dies.

That was the root of Sarah's new problems. _Death_. Not her old struggles with death as the Enforcer. No, she struggled now with the terror she felt of losing what she had found with Chuck, of their love dying.

Allowing their love to change, acknowledging it could change, grow, get better, also meant acknowledging that it could change, diminish, fail or die. It was so precious to her that the thought of it changing for the worse made her resistant to any kind of change in it at all. It would be so much easier to just keep what they had; it was wonderful to her - literally, full of wonder, almost unbelievable. It was everything. She could not lose it, risk it, gamble it.

Sarah still had vestiges of her old worries, in particular, her worry that the universe hated her, her old fatalism.

The universe had let her love Chuck but then nearly driven them apart.

The universe had then, miracle of miracles, allowed them to be together and in love, but she worried that all of it was a deep plot by the universe to set her up for a misery she would not be able to bear.

She wanted what she wanted but she wanted to go slow. Slow. Slow. She needed to go slow because she needed to sneak the changes past the universe.

Otherwise...

 _Then it happened. And it happened because of Frost._

 _Frost suppressed the Intersect in an attempt to keep Chuck safe, and the end result is that Chuck is gone, missing, in danger...maybe...No, I won't think that. I won't, I can't._

 _I can't let the universe hurt him. I have to protect him._

 _Chuck, where are you?_

* * *

That was how Sarah found herself in the belly of a military cargo plane to Thailand.

Chuck was gone. Taken by the Belgian. Taken from her. It was a long story.

 _The long story doesn't matter; Chuck is_ _gone - that is all that matters. He is all that matters. I have to find him._

 _I can't lose him._

* * *

Things had gone wrong because of Frost.

But what Frost did, while it locked the Intersect, unlocked a deep-seated fear in Chuck.

And to be fair to Frost, Sarah had not helped.

She had underestimated Chuck's fear of losing her, his fear that Sarah was in his life because of the Intersect, his fear that it was Intersected Chuck that she loved, not just Chuck. His old fear that he alone, Intersect-less, was not enough for her.

That issue had gotten twisted around a related one: his fear that he counted as a spy only because of the Intersect. Chuck allowed the scientists Beckman sent to restart the Intersect to mistreat him, effectively to torture him. He downplayed what was going on, but Sarah should have seen it, understood better how much fear it would take to bring Chuck to that point. Not so long ago, his fondest wish had been for the Intersect to be gone; now it was for it to return. She should have pondered that more deeply, taken in its significance.

She was so caught up in fighting her own fear that she did not deserve the happiness she had found with Chuck that she failed to see his battle with a version of the same fear, his fear that he did not measure up, had no rightful place at her side. That his long jump to her had been wind-aided, so to speak - or that was what he thought, feared.

He had told her that night in the restaurant, the night she had been out with Shaw. What he wanted was to be a spy and to be a spy with her. For a while, because of Ellie, it looked like he might give up spying. But he could not do it. Not just, as Sarah came to find out, because of his mother, his search to find her, but because, after the grief of Stephen's death wore off, Chuck wanted to be with Sarah, spying with her. Their time apart, when she was on missions with Casey, had been hard on them both. They were much better together, as people and as spies.

And Beckman wanted Chuck back on the team. She had allowed him to step away, but Sarah realized Beckman had done it never expecting it to be permanent. She had always expected Chuck to come back, to be able to talk him back into spying. (It helped that she killed off his other, non-spy world options.) Sarah hoped that Chuck's return would allow him to keep working on becoming the sort of spy he was destined to be, and Sarah wanted to take that journey with him, even if at times it unnerved her, pushed the buttons of her old habits. And he had been making progress, they had been, when Frost showed up, Volkoff in her wake, almost hidden in her skirt, and started the series of events that led to Chuck's disappearance.

But, again, Sarah had not helped. When Chuck needed her to reassure him, she panicked. The looney agent, Rye, sent to help Chuck, was trying to scare the Intersect into action. It was a stupid plan and it meant that Chuck's life would have to be risked - by definition. That is what 'death' in 'Pure Fear of Death' (Rye's stupid name for his stupid plan) meant. Sarah wanted Chuck to have no part of it.

But she explained her fear poorly, made Chuck think she thought he was not a spy - which worsened his insecurities. She had driven him to the Belgian. What she meant was not that Chuck was not a spy, but that he was not the kind of spy Agent Rye was, that Rye or the scientists or Beckman thought he was, wanted him to be. He was still working that out, working it out with her. Together. So, she also meant that she should be with him, that he should want what he said he wanted: to be _a spy with her_. He should not abandon her to go with Rye. But Rye thought Chuck's problem was espionage co-dependency. Rye could not recognize what Chuck was to Sarah, what she was to Chuck, what they were together - because Rye thought as spies think: Independents. Solo. Loners. Emotions, a liability - except, in this instance, fear. Sarah recoiled from that conception now, and she expected Chuck to too. But he did not.

Chuck recoiled from what he took to be Sarah's lack of faith, and he went to Switzerland with Rye. Rye got himself killed and Chuck was taken by the Belgian. Taken. The Belgian. The universe. Taken.

Chuck had been planning a proposal. Sarah had been planning to accept.

ooOoo

Everything fell apart.

Darkened.

And in the storm and stress and panic of the succeeding days, jetting across the world, desperately looking for Chuck, repeatedly coming home empty-handed, Agent Walker leaped down from Sarah's interior walls and forced herself bit by bit back into the exterior world. Sarah could feel it happening but was powerless to stop it; she was not sure she should. She was willing to do anything to save Chuck, even revert to what she had been before Budapest, the baby - before Burbank. Before Chuck. All that mattered was saving him.

Perhaps it was not quite right to say that it was Agent Walker who forced herself back into the exterior world. It was a _changed_ Agent Walker who emerged: self-propelled, not driven by orders, and not numb, not at all, instead terrified beneath her icy surface. Sarah was willing to do anything to get Chuck back but also frightened that what she might have to do to get him back would cost her him. She found a lead to his location by threatening to burn a man from the inside-out, ammonia injection. A cruel death, unspeakably cruel. She was bluffing, the threat was a bluff - she _believed_ it was a bluff. But even as she made the threat, she wondered if Chuck would change how he felt about her if he knew of the threat, if he would think she had gone too far; the mere threat was a horror. Mercifully _(wrong_ word?), the man caved.

Sarah was on the edge, maybe over it. Not sleeping; her nights had become full of imagined scenes, pain and blood, of Chuck, tortured or dead, of her too late to protect him, to save him.

 _I told him I would always come for him, but how can I when I have no idea where he is?_

When she was not in daylight motion she just wanted to curl up in their bed, to know that they had held each other there, to relive making love to him, talking to him, to remember telling Chuck ( _okay_ _, he was technically asleep so maybe I didn't tell him_ ) that she would say _yes_ if he proposed, that she loved him and nothing would change that.

She meant every word. Especially that _yes._

But what if she could not get him back?

 _I have to get him back._

She got the lead.

She called in old markers with agents and higher-ups with the CIA. She was owed favors, even after all her time in Burbank. She knew where bodies were buried, literally and figuratively. She got herself on the cargo plane, got herself equipped. She was going to find her guy.

 _I'm coming, Chuck! Heaven help anyone who gets between us. I will go through them, take them to pieces._

 _Forgive me, Chuck, for what I have to do to save you._

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time as Sarah begins her march across Thailand. Chapter 42, "Darkened Engagements (Part Two): New Wine, Old Wineskin". We shift into Sarah's first-person POV.

Nice to be back at this. Getting my feet back under me.

Z


	42. Darkened Engagements (Two)

**A/N1** Our first time to hear Sarah's first-person voice since crucial events have occurred. The march across Thailand begins in Bangkok...

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

 _Darkened Engagements (Part Two)_ :

 _New Wine, Old Wineskins_

* * *

My love, I am the speed of sound  
I left them motherless, fatherless  
Their souls dangling inside-out from their mouths  
But it's never enough  
I want you

Carved your name across three counties  
Ground it in with bloody hides  
Their broken necks will lie in the ditch  
'till you "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop this madness!"  
I want you

I have waited with a glacier's patience  
Smashed every transformer with every trailer  
'till nothing was standing  
65 miles wide  
But still you are nowhere, still you are nowhere  
Nowhere in sight

Come out to meet me, run out to meet me  
Come into the light

This tornado loves you  
This tornado loves you  
This tornado loves you  
This tornado loves you  
This tornado loves you

What will make you believe me?

\- Neko Case, _This Tornado Loves You_

* * *

 _Some Ice Queen I was...am. I'm going to freeze to death in the belly of this plane before I get to Thailand, before I get to Chuck._

I wrap myself more tightly in the heavy blankets and shiver, partly from cold, partly from fear. The flight is taking forever. My stomach is a knot of dread, like I swallowed a jagged pill of ice, radiating cold internally even as the cargo hold freezes me externally.

I need sleep. Sleep is not a weakness. It is a weapon. I cannot do anything until I am on the ground. I need to sleep…I dream of Chuck, of warmth, of making love.

ooOoo

I wake up a few hours deeper into the flight. Closer to Chuck. _I will always come for you, Chuck._ I grin to myself thinking about telling the smirker that I am on a husband hunt. I am, I know. Husband hunting, that is. Just in a scary sense of the term. Chuck is my home. He is my husband. We just haven't made it official in the eyes of the law. But he is my Chuck, my guy. I want to marry him; I am going to marry him.

* * *

I have been to Thailand before. Twice.

Once early in my days as Graham's Enforcer. One of my first ambitious wetwork missions.

Weeks of planning, careful, fraught infiltration of a bar in Nana Plaza, Bangkok's red light district. A neon nightmare of drugs, nearly naked near-children and non-human sexpats. _Hell_. I had never been in an environment like that before, much less been required to pretend to be part of it. My cover was as a rich young woman who bought sex slaves to take back to the US - the younger and the more helpless, the better.

Most days, I vomited as soon as I got back to my hotel room. I am not sorry I put a bullet in the bastard who purveyed those children - that was one Graham mission that I am sure was a win for the good guys - but I witnessed things no one should ever witness, had to let things happen that no one should ever let happen, all because the mission dictated it, because I had my goddamn orders, all so I could place that bullet in that man's forehead. I did. I did it. The worst thing is that my bullet only slowed the purveyor belt, it did not stop it; still, maybe some kids avoided the fate he had planned for them, escaped. I would like to think so. I need to think so.

 _As ruthless as the opposition. Can I ever tell Chuck about that mission? Would he understand my choices, my feeling that I lacked choices? My action and my inaction? Oh, God, Chuck, be okay, be okay and I will tell you anything, try to, anyway, even if you never look at me the same way again. Just, please, be okay._

 _Can you repent of a past you can't confess?_

 _I need not to think about that._

Back to Bangkok.

That's where the plane is taking me, where it will spit me out. One problem is that the man I executed for Graham had a large organization and many of his men and women interacted with me, saw my face many times. If I have to go back to Nana Plaza, things could go seriously wrong. I would be rolling the dice. It has been years - but I stand out in Thailand, to say the least. Hard to do much about my size, my figure, my hair. I don't have time anyway. My bigger problem is that I am looking for one man in an entire country. I need a plan, a place to start. A person.

 _Deng. I will start with Deng._

* * *

 _Deng. The name means_ red. She was my asset on my second mission to Thailand. It was later, after the CATs. I was able to avoid Nana Plaza. Deng was in the information business. She knew every dirty secret in Bangkok. That meant she knew volumes and volumes. Bangkok is a city of dirty secrets. They pave the streets. If anyone can give me a lead on the Belgian, it will be Deng. But she will have a price. She always did. It was money before; the CIA, Graham, provided it. I just ferried it to her. But I don't have money this time, and even if I did, she would figure out that I have skin in this game, that I am hunting something of inestimable value to me. _Clever old woman; no wonder half the people think she is a witch._ She'll want me to procure more secrets for her. She lives for secrets. _A mission for Deng_. Before I can make it to Chuck. Fine, if that's what she wants, that's what she will get. But not my normal fine needlework. No, I don't have time. I will use a hammer. No niceties. Only speed. No prisoners. No mercy. Only Chuck.

I will have to find her, find Deng. I wonder if she still haunts that apartment above Patpong. As good a place to start as any. If she isn't there, someone will know where she is...

ooOoo

I wake again from dozing. Cold. So cold. I get up and move around, despite the turbulence. I look at my watch. We should be landing soon. The pilot and crew have promised to get me from the airport into the city; after that, I will be on my own. No official connection to the US government. Rogue, if caught. Done. I'd worry about that more if countless missions had not been the same.

I think for a moment of Zondra. Wonder where she is. Why she betrayed me, us. If she betrayed me, us. So much loss in my life. I cannot lose Chuck too. I check my weapons, guns and knives. I have a couple of stun grenades and a tranq gun - the same one Chuck favors. Chuck. My guy. My spy. My not-so-normal-spy spy guy. Maybe one day I will completely shift to a tranq gun too; but not today, not in Thailand. For now, it is an option, not my weapon of choice. The knives on my calf and the knife in my belt, my S&W, these are my weapons of choice. Not Chuck's weapons of choice. Chuck.

Suddenly, I am crying, tears streaming down my cheeks. Very, very _not_ Agent Walker. But I am a changed Agent Walker, Sarah, Chuck's Sarah, positively not the same spy I once was, had to be. Have to be again.

Why did I tell Chuck he was not a spy? What more hurtful thing could I have found to say? I meant he was not a spy like Rye. Like Bryce or Barker or Shaw. That he had nothing of that sort to prove - least of all to me. Least of all. But it came out backward. I made it sound like he had proved nothing to me in all this time, like I do not believe in him. Like Bryce and Barker and Shaw were something he is not.

 _Goddamn me, why can't I ever say straight what is in my heart? Damn it, Dad. Damn it, Graham. The damn distance between my heart and my mouth. Shorter than it used to be but still there. Doesn't Chuck know I think he is great, that his heart makes him great, not the fucking Intersect? Doesn't he know he's my hero? The only true hero I have ever known? - I know, I know, Carina, if you were here you'd be humming_ The Wind Beneath My Wings _. Doesn't mean he isn't._

ooOoo

The plane lands. They stow me away in a mound of equipment. No one really checks anything. Cursory inspection. Typical of airports, bored employees. Security theater.

A half-hour later, they drop me off on a side road on the edge of the city.

I am on my own now. I have to find Chuck. I adjust the black, lightweight jacket I have on. It is hot, but I need the concealment it provides, for me, for my weapons. I have my other items in a used backpack. Nothing new. I put my hair up inside a black ballcap. I start my walk. It will be a while before I get to a place a cab will stop. I have cash but I had no time to get much.

ooOoo

I am at one end of the length of Patpong. A few blocks to Deng's old apartment. I take a deep breath. Panic and hope intermingle. I've got to find her; she's got to know something. That's how this has to go. I start down the street, ignoring the shouting vendors, the pimps, the half-dressed workers. I deliberately shrink a bit, pull in my shoulders and stoop some, trying to seem smaller, lessen my height. I keep the bill of my ballcap on a downward diagonal.

After ten minutes of walking, I find the darkened, enclosed stairwell that leads up to Deng's old place. The light fixture that used to be there is gone, leaving only a gaping hole in the dark ceiling. I stand up, balance myself, check my weapons. I am ready.

I start up the steps one at a time, slowly, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness, the lack of flashing neon. I see no one, nothing that looks like trouble. Still, I move slowly. My whole heart is screaming for me to dash up the stairs, several at a time, but my head knows better. A mistake now and I never make it to Chuck. If he is...No, no, he is alive. He is counting on me. He believes I will save him.

I climb the steps. At the landing, I move quickly and lightly to the door of Deng's old apartment. It used to be painted red. I suppose it still is, but time and darkness have robbed it of luster. I look up and down the landing. No one is there but me. I knock. Again. No answer. My eyes water. I don't have a backup plan. I need Deng. She has to know something. She has to have a price to tell me what she knows. I need…

 _Deng_. The door opens and she is standing there, more wizened and ancient than my memory. I almost grin. I can hear Chuck whisper, "Master Yoda". Except this is Mistress Yoda, and Yoda is wearing an old red silk gown, open in the front, naked beneath. Deng makes no effort to cover herself. She is perhaps too old to care. I don't know. It takes her a minute. She blinks and squints. Eyesight failing.

"Agent Walker. Or is it Agent Walker? You look the same, Agent, but you are not the same. I take it you come to Deng for information? Everyone comes to Deng for information. Many years ago, men came for another reason, but that time has passed," she says as she waves her hand at herself, her open robe. I keep my eyes on Deng's eyes, blanking mine. The old woman's eyes have lost none of their immediate cunning. She steps aside and motions for me to enter. I hear her laugh and I shudder a little. I never liked her laugh, high-pitched, merciless - expensive in a way I cannot explain.

"The gods themselves must have sent you to me, Agent Walker. I have need of you."

 _Of course, you do._ _Tell me, old woman, so that I can get to Chuck._ I make myself be patient. _Breathe, Sarah._ Deng will not hurry. As I expected, she can sense my anxiety, my need, my desperation. She will exact her price.

ooOoo

Deng makes me tea. She works with glacial slowness, exaggerating every gesture, checking and rechecking all her preparations. She watches me from the corner of her eyes. Testing. How much can I endure? She knows I am stretched to the breaking point, that my heart aches. She slows down even more. Pours water into my cup almost a drop at a time. I can hear a clock ticking somewhere in the apartment; each tick seems further away from the one before it, as if the clock were itself slowing down, threatening to stop, bringing time to a standstill.

Oddly, my mind fills with the scene in the Buy More when I first met Chuck. He ended his conversation with me to see about the ballerina and her dad. He risked never seeing me again to help them. Somehow, that buoys me up, gives me enough strength to outlast Deng. She finally hands me the cup. I deliberately let it sit in the saucer for a moment, as if I had all the time in the world. I turn it slowly before grasping it and sipping from it. Deng seems less sure of herself.

"I need you to gather some information for me." Deng caresses that word, 'information', as she used to do. Some things don't age. "I need you to go to a bar in Nana Plaza." _No, she couldn't. She wouldn't._ She does. She names the bar I infiltrated all those years ago. _Rainbow 7_. _How could she know?_

"There is a man there, Chanchai. He runs the place. He has a safe in his office with...items in it I would like to have, to know. I am told he has them all stored on a flash drive he keeps in the safe. Bring it to me, and I will be willing to help you. You have obviously come to me in an hour of need, need for information."

"How do I know you know what I need?"

Deng blinked slowly, then smiled even more slowly, stretching her face little by little, aged latex. "If I do not, Agent Walker, who will?" She stared hard at me. "You have changed, Agent Walker. Are you willing to risk those changes to try to keep them?"

I had no answer. None. Except that I was there, in Deng's apartment.

ooOoo

Chanchai. Not a name I remember. My hope is that the personnel at Rainbow 7 has turned over in the intervening years. Of course, such businesses rarely have workers who earn the gold watch at retirement. Nasty, brutal and short - emphasis on _short_ , that's what their lives are like, exploiters and exploited both. The smart play would be to work up some infiltration strategy, some minor seduction. Get myself in the door on the arm of one of the workers. But I don't have time. Every moment is another moment the Belgian has Chuck.

Even though I am thinking of him constantly, I move him to my mental periphery. I have to. I can't save him if I dwell. I will just sit down and cry and rock myself. The jagged pill of ice in my stomach continues to chill me.

No, my best strategy is a frontal assault. They won't expect it. I may not live through it, but I have done such things before. Budapest. If I move fast, hit them hard, I might be able to make it in and out. The safe is the problem. I have no gadget for cracking it. I explain this problem to Deng. She makes a call. Someone will meet me outside her apartment in fifteen minutes with an explosive. She smirks at me, finding perverse pleasure in prolonging my anxiety. I finish my tea, but the ice in my stomach will not melt. She lights incense and in the curling, spicy smoke, we talk about Rainbow 7, Chanchai. I can feel Agent Walker gripping me more and more. Ryker, _damn him_ , called me a loner. I was. Agent Walker was. I am no longer. But I am alone again, and I can feel my boundaries pulling back, my heart hardening. The old numbness is reappearing around my edges. I am not Agent Walker. I am not Sarah. I am a hybrid. As awful as the pain of my desperation is, I do not want to stop feeling it. I went through years not feeling things, or burying my feelings about them. Years of the corpse dream. I am alive now. I will not go dead again. If I die, I die in love, feeling love, thinking of making love. If I die, I die in love with Chuck, loved by Chuck. Another gift from my guy: for so long, I expected to die lonely and alone, a no one with no one.

Deng's phone rings. Her ring tone, inexplicably, is the Mexican Hat Dance. She sees me smile at it and I can tell she is puzzled. I am cheered for the first time in days.

A good omen.

I leave Deng's apartment. On the bottom stair on the stairway is a plain brown paper bag. I pick it up and look inside. An explosive charge - standard CIA issue - of course, the bad guys have CIA tech. I know well how to work it. It should do. According to Deng, the safe is far from state of the art. I don't remember a safe in the office at Rainbow 7, but who knows how much there has changed? Deng's description of the layout made it seemed mostly unchanged. That is important. I need to move fast. I do not need to be trying to suss out the new floor plan along the way.

ooOoo

Nana Plaza. Sex in the air - and on the floor _Short time_ and _long time_ girls. Money and booze and bodily fluids all flowing. _Hell in neon._ Most of the prostitutes are young; most are so high they barely know what is happening. Fat old American men, greasy and debauched, groping young women with empty eyes, smiles that do not reach their lips. I have seen all this before. I have tried to forget it.

I step out of the crowds into a corner. As unobtrusively as I can, I suit up, checking the position of my weapons or repositioning them. I tighten the straps on my backpack. It is an encumbrance, but I have to have it, wear it in.

Maybe I can compromise. No full-on frontal assault. Maybe. I just have to get through the door.

There will be security there, two men, Deng said, armed. I need to get through to the main room. If I can get through the door quietly, the patrons in the main room will almost certainly be focused on the dancers, the strippers. There is a door at the back, marked for employees only. It opens on a short hallway to a staircase. Chanchai's office is upstairs. The safe is supposed to be inside it. After the explosion, I will have to fight my way out, assuming I did not fight my way in.

I take my hat off and let my hair fall, using my fingers to fluff it out. I unzip my dark jacket. I have on a dark tank top underneath it. A little cleavage shows. I feel slimy, but not from the heat. _I am sorry, Chuck. I need to get inside. I am alone in Bangkok, in Thailand. I have to save you._

I think of Mary Bartowski, of Frost - and of what she did to protect her family. I hear Deng's question again: _Are you willing to risk those changes to try to keep them?_ At the end of the day, all that matters is saving Chuck. But I don't want to lose myself, or to lose us, not if I can keep from it. Risking my changes to keep them.

I start toward Rainbow 7's door. Time to roll the dice. Risk and change. Love and death.

 _I'm coming, Chuck. I will always come for you._

* * *

 **A/N2** Trying to keep our heroine's voice changing as she changes is a real challenge. Tune in next time for Chapter 43, "Darkened Engagements (Part Three): Into the Pit". (42 and 43 are really one long chapter, but I thought it more effective to break it into two shorter ones.

Thoughts?

Z


	43. Darkened Engagements (Three)

**A/N1** More story.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

 _Darkened Engagements (Part Three)_ :

 _Into the Pit_

* * *

Race of Doom:  
Is it on?  
Is it off?  
Reply!

It's a matter of time  
It's a matter of luck  
It's a factor of chance  
'Til I self-destruct

\- Devo, _Race of Doom_

* * *

I see the two guards, doormen, sumo - whatever. They make me think of Colt. Two of them, bigger than he.

That makes me think of Chuck, his fall. I feel myself tremble all over. I can't do that. I need to be at peak responsiveness. My eyes well again, tears. _Dammit._ I stand for a minute, force myself to breathe in and out, counting, making myself focus on the numbers, the respiratory motion. I was so afraid. Afraid I had lost him. That fear was so awful, that sense of loss. But it lasted for mere eternal minutes. This fear, this sense of loss, here and now, has been going on for eternal days. I am not sure my frame can support it for much longer. The weight of it on my shoulders, on my heart.

But I did not lose Chuck then. I could not stop what happened, but Casey did.

Casey. He and I have become close, although neither of us has acknowledged it in so many words. Partners for more than three years. Implicit trust. He caught my Chuck, kept him alive. Like he caught Chuck in the railyard, shooting Perry, the mole. Like he caught me and told me what he had done, knowing that I could have had him charged with murder. He caught us as we were falling, after the Red Test, after Shaw. _Casey_. I hurt for him about Kathleen. But I am happy for him about Alex. She has changed him, built on the changes Chuck caused, and, I guess, that I caused. I hate that I frightened Casey before I got on the plane to come here. He was frightened of me and frightened for me.

He's my friend. I should have brought him with me, instead of giving in to my old drive, my old automatism, my fear of letting anyone else in, letting anyone help me - at precisely the moment I need help the most. Too many years Enforcing. Too many years alone. Too many years afraid of ties to anyone else, of the feelings that having others around opened me too. Fears of what they might ask, of what they might find out. Alone and afraid. Virtually no friends. No lovers (a few men, and Bryce, no lovers). _Carina, on me: 'tight-assed ascetic assassin'. Carina has a certain talent for words, really. Alliteration. As she says, Carina went to college._ But now, Chuck, friend and boyfriend, and lover. Husband (-to-be), even if he doesn't know it yet. _He's going to propose; Morgan said so!_ And Casey. And even Morgan. Partners and friends. Devon and Ellie. Friends and family.

 _Why the hell am I here alone?_ But I am. I have to go on. Too late to expect help.

I think of Deng, of my thought that Chuck would have called her 'Master Yoda'. That gives me an idea.

I reach the door of Rainbow 7. The two massive men close ranks, 700 pounds of muscle, shoulder to shoulder. Neither looks directly at me. Still, I put a certain twist in my stride. I let my expression go vapid while remaining pleasant. I have played this part before - the dumb woman under the blond hair.

I look at the men and give them a big, unfocused smile, gawking around, trying to peer past them. They finally acknowledge me. "Hi, guys! Is this Rainbow 7? There are so many rainbows here! It's like that Skittles commercial…'Taste the rainbow!'" Despite their size, they seem innocent of Skittles, or the commercial slogan. I stand up on my tiptoes, trying to scan inside, swaying a bit to the music I hear. "Is he here?"

No response. Finally one gravels out. "Is who here?" His English is good, flawless, but with a definite Oxford accent. Strange world.

" _Master_ Chanchai." I double-up 'master', sounding submissive and seductive simultaneously, ready to do whatever Chanchai wants - his words not wishes, but commands.

The one who answered me looks at me with more interest, puzzled. I am not dressed as he would expect me to be dressed, certainly not dressed for clubbing...or anything else of the sort my answer suggested. I look down at my clothes and then back up. "Stupid airline. Lost my suitcase. These clothes are the only ones I have. But, don't worry, I look a lot better underneath them. I'm...um...in the mood, fellas, and I...need to get to Master Chanchai." My stomach knots. I hate that I can do this; I've hated it since the Farm, especially since talking to Christiana long ago in Leipzig. Just thinking about Chanchai believing he could touch me makes my skin crawl. But I have got to get inside. I push the revulsion down. The two men turn to each other and seem to talk telepathically. Maybe it's an Oxford thing.

I pout. "Fellas, I need to see the Master. He doesn't know I am here, but I promise, he will like the surprise. We met a few weeks ago...you know, when he was away…" I take refuge in vagueness and the definite look of me.

"What's in the backpack?"

"Just a few carry-on items. Some things to wear, you know, ... _barely_ wear. And a few...toys." I lick my lips, then I swing the backpack around and unzip it. I stick my hand inside and pull up a corner of the blue lingerie, the only non-weapon I am carrying, brought from home, a promise to myself that I will find him, find Chuck. That we will be together again.

The lace is strong. Effectual. They look at each other again and then part, pillars parting. I step in between them, giving them no time for second thoughts, more telepathic exchange. I wave with my fingers. "I'll tell the Master how nice you fellas were - and I will be extra nice to him because of it. I bet he'll be extra nice to you, after." I see them smirk, non-telepathically. I walk on.

The main room is ablaze with flashing neon reflected from turning disco balls. There's a line of dancers, most topless, gyrating in the front of the room. A large group, men mostly, is crowded against the edge of the stage, reaching out, trying to grab a girl. I duck my head and weave between the tables. I was lucky that the doormen had no means of immediately contacting Chanchai, that the blue lingerie convinced them I was telling the truth. _I can't wear that for Chuck now. I will trash it. Tainted._

Pausing now would be a mistake. It is possible someone still works here who saw me years ago. I head for the door Deng told me about. No one stops me. I push through it, into the hallway. I stop for a minute. I roll up my pants leg, exposing the knives on my calf. I climb the stair. The door at the top is marked _Manager_ in English and in Thai. The world is the same all over. I open it, gun behind my back. I step part of the way into the office.

A man is seated at the large desk. He's Thai. Chanchai. That the office would be empty was too much to hope for, especially when the doormen let me in. Still, he might have stepped out for a minute, unbeknownst to them. No such luck. There he sits.

He's small. Gold chains around his neck, displayed by the open collar of his too-tight rayon shirt. He has more gold chains around his wrist. Gold rings. He's shiny, golden. I wonder for a moment is he has a gun like Peyman Alahi. His shirt is even shiny. He looks at me. I put my dumb blond face on immediately. I smile suggestively - a _master_ in my smile. He reacts, almost reflexively, smiles back. Gold teeth. _What were the odds?_

"Are you Chanchai?" I sound bubbly, drunk. I assume he knows English. He does; his smile grows more golden. He nods. I step the rest of the way into the office and point my gun at his head. "Move or speak and I kill you." Less golden.

ooOoo

If Chanchai had been out of the office, that would have made things easier in certain ways. But I would have had no choice but to blow the safe, and then to contend with the aftermath. Since he is here, I have to contend with him, but maybe I do not have to blow the safe.

"A beautiful woman with a beautiful gun." He's trying to get a reaction from me, stall me, test me. I step to the desk and put the gun barrel against his forehead.

"Not here to talk. Open the safe." I see a flash of something complicated in his eyes. Reluctance is there. Okay, so Deng did not send me on a goose chase. I pull my gun back slightly then jam it hard against his head. "Now!"

I am the Ice Queen. He yields. He puts his hands up and I gesture for him to turn his chair. I see the safe, small but very heavy, standing on the floor behind him. He turns and I move as he does, my gun on him. By the time he has rotated, I have the gun barrel against the back of his head. He missed his chance.

Chanchai begins to turn the knob. So far as I can tell, the safe is free-standing, non-electronic. Old school. He turns the knob in the other direction. I now see his hands are shaking. The reality of his situation seems to have settled on him. As he turns the knob back in the original direction, I take a split second to scan the room. No other doors. One window, large, on the right-hand wall as I came in. Curtains are drawn, no view. I see no weapons in view, none on him. He has a cell phone on the desk. One desk drawer is cracked. A gun there, I'm willing to bet.

He turns the handle of the safe. Opens it. Sits there. I look over his shoulder, inside. There is nothing inside the safe except a photo album. I hear myself exhale. _What is Deng doing to me?_ "Give it to me." He reaches in and takes it out. Still facing away from me, he holds it up when I jam the barrel against the back of his head again. Hard. Hard enough to bruise, maybe break the skin. I use my other hand to take the photo album.

I put it on the desk, then open it. Photos. Men and youngsters, children. The sorts of things I saw before but could not stop. Graham's orders. I then I recognize some of the faces. Men I know of from tv, from newspapers, from my CIA work. Powerful men. I can tell from the album and the way Chanchai held it that the pictures are dual-use for him, blackmail and...inspiration. And then I put it together. Deng somehow knew I was the one who terminated the old owner of the Rainbow 7. I don't know how she came to know - but that is what she does, she knows things. She sent me here as a sequel. She sent me here to execute Chanchai. That is what she expects me to do. And she expects me to work it out. She knew what was in the safe.

I don't understand her motivations. But I know - I know things too, especially Enforcer things, even if Chuck has made that knowledge less heavy, mostly forgotten. I make myself break that train of thought. I flip a few more pages, nauseating pages. And then I see Chanchai in some of the pictures. Doing things. He's not just running the purveyor belt, he's using it. I feel my hand tighten on the S&W, my finger begins to squeeze the trigger. _Enforce._ Agent Walker is good at death. _Squeeze the trigger. The earth cannot bear a man like this._

But I am a woman in love. I am not the Enforcer. I was. I am not. Tense shift, life change. Changes. A difference of being. I do not want to do this, for even if Chanchai deserves it - I don't deserve it. I am no longer an executioner.

Chanchai suddenly tips his chair to the side. I realize, too late, I let the gun barrel drift from his head as I was thinking, feeling. He lands on his knees, then kicks the chair backward, into my legs. At the same time, he stabs his hand into the open desk drawer. I underestimated him. He clearly knows a fighting style; he is cat-quick.

The chair catches me off guard. Knocks me off balance. I take a step back, then another, reaching out to grab a file cabinet to steady myself. When I look up, he is pulling the gun from the drawer, raising it. I fire. He is fast, but I am faster. The shot snaps his head back, and he goes down. He is dead. I know death. It used to be my business.

No hesitation. I grab the photo album and stuff it in my backpack. I check the safe again to make sure I did not miss anything hidden there. Nothing. I hear heavy steps, two sets, in the hallway below. The doormen. I lift Chanchai's chair, step over his body, and I heave the chair into the window. Even with the curtains drawn, it shatters the glass, goes through. The curtains stay in place, still blocking my view. The heavy steps are on the stairs. I put the gun away, grab the CIA ordinance, setting it for a few seconds (cover for escape), and then put the backpack back on my shoulders. I take a couple of running steps and then go through the window, using my hands to part the curtains.

For a split second, I am airborne above Nana Plaza. A God's Eye View of Hell...

...And then am falling, surrounded by the flash of the explosion and pelted by bits of debris.

The flash is gone as I land in a dumpster, full of sticky, soggy things. I do not want to know what they are. I jump out. Wipe my hands on my pants. I hear a siren, shouts. People are running. I open the backpack again and grab my ballcap, put it on, stuffing my hair inside as quickly as I can. I swing it back on my shoulders and I walk away into the crowds of people running towards the smoking Rainbow 7.

ooOoo

I knock on Deng's faded red door. She opens it. I hear a tv in the background. News of an explosion in Nana Plaza. She looks at me, up and down. I step inside and she closes the door. We walk to a table in the kitchen. I take off the backpack and retrieve the photo album. We still have said nothing. I hand it to her.

She opens it. For the first time, I see the calculations in her eyes stop. She turns the pages. Stops at one. Her shoulders bunch. I hear her breath catch. She turns the album toward me. I do not want to look at it. She covers most of one of the photos with her hand. Leaving only the face of a girl visible.

"My granddaughter. They found her naked body in a ditch on the edge of Bangkok a month ago. I have been yearning, praying for vengeance. And then the gods sent you to me, Agent Walker. Is he dead?"

I nod. "I had to kill him or be killed. You sent me to kill him."

She looks genuinely sorry - for me, not him. "You are not the woman you were, even if you retain her skills, Agent Walker. You have found love."

I stall for a second. Should I admit this to her, maybe she will use it against me. I nod anyway and feel a small smile on my face.

She shuts the photo album and looks at me. "Is your love in danger?" I nod again, the smile leaving my face.

"What would you like to know?"

"There is a foreigner in Thailand, known as the Belgian. He has a captive. Holding him somewhere in the country."

She nods. "It is not a big country, Agent Walker, not by US standards, but it is still a country. Finding one man in it…"

"Can you help me?" I try not to let the desperation I feel invade my voice, but the adrenaline of the Rainbow 7 visit is leaving me and despair is reclaiming all of me.

"I do not know where...the Belgian is. But I know someone who may, or who will himself know someone who does. You may have to follow a trail of arrows…There is a man..."

She tells me. I do not know where Chuck is, not yet. But I have a direction. Still, it is late and my hands are trembling. Not enough sleep, too much adrenaline. I need to rest. I will have to delay the hunt until tomorrow. Now, I need to hide and I need a bed.

Deng leaves me for a minute. She comes back with a card. A hotel. "It is nearby. A friend runs it. Go, give the card at the desk, you will be safe." I take the card.

"I have used your past tonight, Agent Walker. I have my ways of finding things out, and you never know when knowledge may prove useful." She paused. "I call you Agent Walker, but you are not. You are someone else, someone new. I have no special wisdom for you, but let me say this. Find your love, secure your future. Forget your past. It cannot change. But you can. You have. You have repented for it by changing as you have, by choosing or endorsing those changes. Be the woman you are, were always meant to be. The gods do not hate you, Agent Walker, even if they seem to test you beyond what you can endure."

Deng walks me to the door. Her face returns to its old look, her eyes look cunning again, calculating. But I do not think it has anything to do with me. I think her mind is on the photo album, the men in the pictures. Justice.

We part company. I walk to the hotel, present the card at the desk. I am immediately a VIP, shown to a room, no questions asked, no names or money exchanged. I take off the backpack. I reach in and take out the blue lingerie, drop it in the trash. If...when I find Chuck, when I am sure he is okay, I will make love to him until neither of us can see straight. But he'll have to settle for me naked.

I smirk to myself, a small smirk. _I know my guy. I doubt he will find that a hardship._

I sleep, dreaming of Chuck, hearing the Mexican Hat dance, revisiting our first date.

ooOoo

The next day I visit the bar Deng told me about. That sends me to another. And another. I find...resistance and end up in more than one bloody barfight, always managing to come out on top, greater skill and greater desperation. I move quickly, staying ahead of the police or friends of the men I have fought. I finally find the man I think I really need. After some...persuasion...he tells me of another man who always knows where the Belgian is.

That man runs pit fights in the jungle.

 _Of course._

I am making progress. But in my gut, I know what each passing hour means. I am in a race but I cannot run. I have to make it in time but I have to be careful. I have to, I cannot make a mistake. Everything is riding on this. Glory or doom. A race to one or the other.

 _I am coming, Chuck. Be as strong as I know you are._ _Be the sort of spy I know you are. Hold on._

* * *

 **A/N2** As I said, this chapter and the previous one are really one unit. Tune in next time, Chapter 44, "Darkened Engagements (Part Four): Answering the Scratch".

I mentioned this in Chutes and Ladders (new chapter of it this weekend) but my two on-going stories are to be my swan song. I do not intend to write any more fanfiction when I finish MisEd and Chutes. No need for comments, just wanted folks to know.


	44. Darkened Engagements (Four)

**A/N1** This story still has about four or five chapters to go (remember, it will encompass the Volkoff infiltration). We will be weaving in and out of Sarah's first person POV. Here we move out of it.

Thanks for reading and reviewing.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

 _Darkened Engagements (Part Four)_ :

 _Answering the Scratch_

* * *

Old Black Hen is that you again?  
Singing the Bad Luck Lullaby  
Come right on in, it's midnight again  
Time for the Bad Luck Lullaby

\- Songs: Ohia, _Bad Luck Lullaby_

* * *

Dawn, morning. Alone.

Sarah was up and on the road before the sun rose. In fact, she had stolen a car, a Jeep, before the sun rose. It had been a busy dark morning.

Leaning forward, she clicked off the headlights. Sun up, there was now adequate light to drive by.

She had gotten more sleep. Her trembling, there since she awakened, had stopped. She had grabbed some fruit and bread at a street stand, wolfed it down, before clicking 'start' on a 3D version of _Grand Theft Auto_. Luckily, she had found the Jeep and been able to get it started without being discovered.

She was heading into the jungle. The roads had been shrinking in size and quality as she got further from Bangkok. She expected to have to abandon the Jeep and walk the final distance when the time came. She was unsure what to expect.

ooOoo

Luck had been on her side at Rainbow 7 and since, whatever was true of the gods ( _I hope you are right, Deng)_. No one had recognized her.

She had scanned a newspaper as she ate her makeshift breakfast. The newspaper contained jumbled follow-up reports about Rainbow 7, in particular about a giant blond - but the supposed eyewitnesses could not decide if the blond hair were short or long, whether the blond was a he or a she. _Funny. Funny?_ A witness claimed to have seen the blond dive from a window atop the exploding Rainbow 7, but no one could corroborate that, and no one seemed to credit it, really. Drinks, drugs, smoke: who knew what people imagined?

There was also an item, not connected to Rainbow 7, about a series of barfights in the slums of the city yesterday.

Luck had been on her side. Jumping out of Chanchai's window could have killed her or incapacitated her. She had jumped not knowing what was below her. A physical leap of faith. Not a very Agent Walker thing to do.

Deng was right about Agent Walker: although Sarah had accessed Agent Walker and still possessed the skills of Agent Walker, she was Agent Walker no more. She never would be again; she wouldn't let herself become that again. She could not go back. Not to the way things were, not to the woman she had been.

Sarah's heart was in play now as it had never been before in her pre-Burbank days. Now, and since she had come to Burbank, the means mattered to her, not just the ends. And her ends had changed.

She was no longer blindly obedient to her orders, an automaton. She had not been for a while, although breaking free from that blind obedience had been fitful and slow. _What did Chuck call me once? An emotionless robot. That was when Jill showed up. I nursed the hurt of those words for a long time. But there was truth in them. Agent Walker was not emotionless but she was numb - partly by choice, partly by necessity. I feel that old numbness again now, out on the edges of me, creeping in. I have to fight it. I am not numb anymore. I will not be numb anymore._

Sarah's life was no longer a weary rotation of missions. She had something more - she had _a life, a going concern apart from spying, even if it was currently entangled with spying_ \- she had something to look forward to at mission's end, something to look forward to when she and Chuck finally left the spy life behind. _Assuming we eventually get the chance._

The chance. _At a family of our own_. She felt her cheeks burn at the thought. It was the first time she had said that to herself not just trying it on, but with the conviction that it was what she wanted. Not today. Not tomorrow. There were still too many complications, the Intersect chief among them. But a tomorrow not too many tomorrows away. _Someday. Soon but not too, too soon._

Sarah noticed two cars behind her. They had been there for a while and had shadowed her route. She had been tracking them out of habit as she drove and reflected, countersurveillance so deeply ingrained in her that she needed to make no conscious decision to perform it. Spy habit, years deep.

It made no immediate sense unless the police or friends of men she had beaten in bar fights had caught up with her. Certainly, she had left a trail behind her. But she doubted that the Bangkok police cared very much, even if they connected the brawls with the Rainbow 7 explosion. She doubted anyone was losing sleep over Chanchai's passing - least of all the people who knew him best. She doubted also that the police were motivated to follow-up on bar fights in Khlong Toei, the slum section of Bangkok Sarah had been in as she hunted the Belgian.

But then who was following her? She was now sure she was being followed. In fact, the two cars were slowly closing on her, and, she realized, had been since they had gotten onto the mostly deserted road.

The road was straight for a distance ahead, and reasonably smooth-looking, so Sarah punched the gas. Her Jeep shot forward, the engine growling. She peeked in the rearview. The cars behind her had sped up too and were still gaining. _Shit. Who? Why?_

The cars were faster than her Jeep. They were quickly closing the distance. Another peek into the rearview showed her the face of the driver of the lead car. Sarah's throat closed.

Kaan Sudham. _Kaan Sudham is dead. Or not. Not, I guess._

ooOoo

Sarah had been to Thailand twice. The first time was the infiltration of the child prostitution ring centered on Rainbow 7. The second time was the time when Deng had been Sarah's asset.

Kaan Sudham had been a minor gun runner until he married into money. How that happened was beyond Sarah's understanding, but it had. He had married a beautiful young Thai woman, the heir to an outrageous fortune. She inherited the money and the empire when her father died, not long after she married Kaan (over her father's protests). A couple of years later, she died in a car crash from which Kaan walked away. The investigation corroborated Kaan's story or seemed to. His wife had lost control of their car and it had gone over an embankment, throwing Kaan free. The car exploded at the bottom of the embankment.

Kaan used his new fortune to become the major gun smuggler in his part of Asia, large enough to count as a competitor of note to Alexei Volkoff. Deng had come to know a great deal about Kaan's operation and she sold the information to Sarah. Sarah used it to gain access to various caches of weapons and then to systematically destroy them. The last cache had been one that Kaan himself was guarding. When Sarah destroyed it - a massive explosion and fire - he was taken to have died in the warehouse.

Sarah's glance in the rearview had shown her Kaan's face - but also shown it to be disfigured. He had lived, but not unscathed. But why, how was he here, racing behind her? Had Deng sold her out after all? Even after what Deng had said?

Sarah had met Kaan once during her mission. It had been accidental, and she thought he had made nothing of it. She had bumped into him on the street after she had observed a meet between him and a buyer. It was not the sort of mistake Sarah made. Normally, she had the mark's habits down, could predict almost everything he or she did. But on that particular day, Kaan took a flyer, left his protection detail and walked a bit in the city on his own. She had no more than jostled him on the street, but she had seen him look at her, notice her, felt his stare after she passed. There was no reason for him to think the blond he saw had anything to do with the attack on his weapons cache just before they were due to be taken to the buyer, but it was possible he had remembered her. That was a long time ago, though.

And then it hit her. Kaan had been educated at Oxford. She heard Kaan's voice in her head, remembered it. His accent was the same as the Rainbow 7 doormen. They were the right age to have been there at the same time. Sarah had no idea if they had been close enough to have been hurt or killed in the explosion, but her guess was that they would have lived through it. Maybe Chanchai and Kaan were connected. She had no recent intel on criminal activity in Bangkok. She had gotten on the plane too fast, her panic too complete. It now looked like her two separate past missions had gotten knotted together.

She looked in the rearview. Both cars were pressing her. She saw into the second. Two hulking figures. _Fuck._ She was certain who they were. It hadn't been Deng. Someone else had followed her trail. The doormen must have told their story to Kaan and he remembered her when they described her. _Damn._ One danger of operating as a beautiful white woman Thailand. A walking lighthouse, hard to hide. But what were the odds? _I am so close, Chuck, but I can't seem to get there!_

Sarah started looking for a side road. Her Jeep was only an advantage off-road. On the road, even the current narrow one, the sedans with their powerful engines had the advantage. The problem was that the road was bordered by heavy vegetation, jungle, and even her Jeep would not get far in that. She was in no hurry to abandon the vehicle. She still had miles to go to get to her destination.

Kaan and his men had their version of Sarah's problem. They could catch up - had already done so almost - but they could not pass her or squeeze her. The road was too narrow, at least where they were and for as far ahead as Sarah could see. Her best guess was that they would open fire soon, hoping to hit her or to disable the Jeep.

Sarah's intuition took over. The lead car had Kaan in it. He would want her, want her dead. He was nursing an old grudge, even if it was newly connected to Sarah. She eased off the accelerator just a bit. Kaan's car nudged closer. Sarah had to time this right. There would be a moment when they would be close enough for bullets to be a real threat. She had to let them get that close in order to do what she hoped to do. She eased off the accelerator a bit more. The front chase car got closer. A moment later, shots rang out. The rear window of the Jeep exploded. Sarah felt the spray of glass, a shower of needles, but she was okay. Another shot. A chuck of the dashboard exploded, plastic and styrofoam in a cloud around her for a second.

 _Now!_

She hit the brake with both feet, jamming it hard to the floor, bracing herself at the same time. She kept the Jeep on the road as it skidded to a stop. She timed it right. Luck was still on her side. Kaan's driver had not seen the sudden stop coming. He thought he was closing the gap entirely because of the superior speed of the sedan. He panicked, jerked the wheel. The sedan screamed past Sarah and into the heavy vegetation on her left-hand side. Unfortunately for the driver and for Kaan, the sedan slammed into a large tree in a massive crash, screaming metal and shattered glass. As Sarah punched the accelerator, she looked over. Kaan's body was half on the hood of the car, half inside. His scarred face was badly bloodied, his neck craned at an angle inconsistent with living. The driver was slumped in his seat, the steering wheel pinning him down. He might have been alive; he was no threat. If he was alive.

Another shot and the front windshield of the Jeep shattered. She veered right, then left and heard two more shots but saw or felt no damage. The brake trick was unlikely to work a second time. The car was creeping up on her, but slowly, keeping her in range of gunshots while maintaining the stopping distance between them.

Sarah jerked the wheel of the Jeep, moving onto the strip of grass between the road proper and the jungle. The Jeep bounced like a carnival ride. Sarah hit the brakes and was out of the car almost before it stopped. She grabbed her backpack and crashed into the heavy undergrowth. On foot, she was smaller, lighter, faster. Her odds were better. She just needed to find a way to separate the behemoths. And then she had to find a way to kill or incapacitate them singly. _That's all. Piece of cake, right? Right? Shit._

Vines and limbs tore at her, scraping her arms. She used the backpack to push her way forward until she got to a clearing. She quickly checked her S&W - full - and the knife on her belt - ready. She had her holster of knives around her ankle.

She made herself quiet her breathing and listen. Neither of the two men was going to be able to sneak through the jungle. She would hear them coming.

She did. They had separated. Too sure of themselves, of their weapons, their size. It probably helped that their memory of her was of her at the door, displaying lingerie, looking unthreatening. They had seen her cause Kaan's crash - but they were now expecting a gunfight or a physical encounter. Sarah made herself not think about how a physical encounter might end, if she was bested but lived through it. Better to be killed, almost certainly.

She put the backpack on her shoulders and moved into another green cloud of heavy vegetation. She was able to wedge her way down to a space near the ground below the leaves and between the vines. She would let them lumber toward her. She just needed them to stay apart. One by himself, hit fast, hit hard, hit with the skill of Agent Walker, and the odds would even up quickly.

After a few excruciating minutes, she heard one approaching. She could not hear the other, but she thought it unlikely that he was nearby. Sarah's new problem was how to emerge from her hiding place quickly enough not to be shot. She pulled her combat knife off her belt and began cutting the nearby vines. She worked fast, cutting all that she could reach. She put the knife away and waited. The canopy of vegetation above her prone form was now largely detached from the ground. She ought to be able to stand up quickly.

She heard a heavy footfall, then saw a shoe from her hiding place. She shot him in the foot; she heard the gasp of pain. Then she rose, stood, the vegetation rising with her. She saw the doorman's face - a terror gripped it. He did not know what he was seeing. She saw recognition finally form in his eyes and knew he was about to squeeze the trigger…

But she already had. His eyes went out of focus. He never finished his squeeze. He crashed backward into the greenery. Sarah moved immediately, the vines stuck to her back, her backpack. She veered off, heading back toward her Jeep. She heard the other man cry out, presumably the name of the man she had just killed, but she did not understand what he had said. She was moving too urgently, with too much focus. She was trying to move in a broad half-circle. To come up behind the second man. She heard him, the sound of him crashing through the jungle, trying to find the first man. As she moved, the vegetation fell from her. She heard the name cried again, understood it: "Akara!" She made herself stop. The second man was still crashing through the vegetation. She took off again. She was now behind him. He was making too much noise to hear her. She fought her way forward until she reached his path, then she picked up speed, using his own path to reach him suddenly, soundlessly.

The second man came into view just ahead of Sarah. She had come almost full circle, it turned out. The second man had seen the first; he bent down to check, to see if the first man was still alive. He checked; he sobbed. Maybe her joke to herself about their telepathy back at the Rainbow 7 had something to it.

Agent Walker raised her gun; Sarah lowered it.

Sarah swung the backpack off her shoulder and, in the midst of the second man's wail, retrieved her tranq gun and shot him with it. He reacted when it hit his shoulder. He stood. When he turned and saw her, she shot him again. And again. He rushed her, but he stumbled and fell with a damp thud onto the ground a few feet in front of her.

Sarah turned and ran. Switching back to her pistol, she shot both rear tires of the sedan, then she climbed into the Jeep and sped away, hoping her past in Thailand had finished with her and her with it. As Deng said, it was time to secure her future. It was time to find Chuck. _Please, please be ok! I am close. Close._

ooOoo

Sarah wheeled the Jeep into the muddy lot. She had been able to drive all the way after all. She was exhausted, badly scratched from vines and thorns. She had a host of small cuts on her arms and shoulders from shattering glass. It was work just to walk. She was profoundly tired.

It took some talking, and the look of her and the bullet holes and damage to the Jeep helped, but she finally wheedled an audience with the man who ran the place, who oversaw the pit fights. He knew where the Belgian was. But he would only tell Sarah if she fought the champion in the pit and won. She agreed, even knowing what she knew about such fights. A fight to the death. Winning and living were the same: she had heard people in the compound talking: the champion had killed everyone who had gotten in the pit with him. Mercilessly.

ooOoo

Word got around immediately that the champion was going to fight a woman, _a beautiful blond,_ and the compound began to buzz, literally and metaphorically. Blood lust. Blood and lust. Who knew what might happen in the pit before the champion killed the woman?

Sarah was shown to a room in which change and in which to wait for the fight. She would win. She had to win. She would find the Belgian, she would find Chuck, or she would die trying. Die. She would rather do that than live without Chuck.

She put on the shorts and black tanktop they gave her. A woman came in to help Sarah wrap her hands. As the woman wrapped them, Sarah's hands began to shake violently. The woman arched a brow, spoke softly but without pity: "He will kill you." She finished, left.

Sarah stood alone.

The jagged pill of ice was again radiating cold in the pit of her stomach. Exhaustion bone-deep. She was stretched so thin she felt transparent. Saran Wrap wrapped around a jagged pill of ice.

Her trembling worsened.

She worried that luck had finally changed sides. The gods were betting against her.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for the pit fight and the rescue. Chapter 45, "Heart of Hearts".

Thoughts? PM? Review?

Z


	45. Darkened Engagements (Five)

**A/N1** We toggle from 3rd- to 1st-person here. Sand and snakes. Casey and Morgan.

Thanks for reading.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

 _Darkened Engagements (Part Five)_ :

 _Heart of Hearts_

* * *

Down in the cockpit,  
Man need the woman to pull him right out of it,  
Down in the cockpit,  
Man need the woman to pull him right out of it

\- XTC, _Down in the Cockpit_

* * *

In her years as an agent, Sarah had faced death. Many, many times.

Back in her days of working with Graham, it had almost gotten to be old hat, if that was possible. _I know Death. He wears an old hat_.

 _Another day, another near-death experience._

She had known then that any day could be her last, and she had resigned herself to that fact. Not that she had a death-wish or anything like that, but she was so numb that she had a hard time imagining what real change dying would make in her circumstances. _From blind and numb in the light to blind and numb in the dark? How much of a difference could it be? Maybe death would even be better, a deep, corpse-dream-less corpse sleep. Peace. No more missions._ _Carina's nickname: Headstone._

She had not given into those thoughts but they had floated around in her head and would not simply sink and disappear. They were particularly bad during those times when Graham had nearly burnt her out, driven her past even her endurance.

She had been driven past her endurance now. Not by Graham. By the Belgian. He had taken Chuck and she was going to find him and make him pay for that. If she could just win this fight. Ordinarily, even against a man of greater size, Sarah would have liked her chances: she was physically gifted, cat-quick. She had an innate sense of her opponent, of strengths and weaknesses. She also had an almost unfailing aim, whether with a gun, a knife, a fist or a foot. She hit what she meant to hit, knew how to maximize damage. But she was exhausted and she would have no time to sleep before the fight.

She forced herself to sit down, cross-legged. She had been brought a bottle of water and she drank from it. She focused on her breathing. In an attempt to relax, she let her mind wander, her thoughts turn themselves.

* * *

Why did I stay in the CIA after Dad was released?

Graham could have gone after Dad again, I suppose, but that isn't why I stayed. The truth is that I had nowhere to go, no non-con, non-assassin skills to market, no life that seemed viable outside the Agency. I should have known that was also always part of Graham's plan for me. Recruit me before I knew any other life outside of conning, give me an additional set of skills that, once they had been used, disqualified me, or seemed to disqualify me, for any normal life, or, at any rate, any happy life. _For Agent Walker, there was only the Agency._ A match made by Graham, far south of Heaven.

A prison without bars. My prison without bars. He distracted me with the CATs, with Bryce. He never released me from my cell, he just changed its interior, put other people inside with me. Zondra and Carina and Amy. Bryce.

Burbank was supposed to be just another change in the interior of my cell, and Chuck, a new person inside with me. My prison without bars…

I remember traveling with Dad one summer. Cons. I was twelve, thirteen. We stopped to eat at a roadside cafe. There were fly-bottles on the tables. I had never seen any before. I watched in troubled fascination as flies entered the open mouth on the top of the bottles, drawn by the sugar water pooled in the bottom. Once inside, and once sated, they tried to leave but could not. The mouth on the top remained open, large enough for the fly to escape easily. But no flies did. Once inside, they never escaped, although they were not really trapped, not shut inside the bottle.

I turned to Dad. "Why don't they escape?" He had been watching me watch them.

"They don't fly straight up, or don't do it well, so they never manage to get back to the mouth. If they walked the walls to the mouth they could escape, but few, if any, do that. They don't travel on foot. So they eventually die in the bottle."

Graham had done the same thing to me. Put me in my own fly-bottle.

I could not escape, although the bottle was open. I couldn't fly straight, straight up. Agent Walker couldn't fly straight up. So I flew around and around in an open cage.

Until Budapest, until the baby. I think I finally caught sight of the opening then, knew there was, there had always been a way out if I could just see how to take it. But I couldn't do it until Chuck: he kept telling me I could fly straight up, fly straight up and out. But it took him forever to convince me. I had grown used to the fly-bottle; I had been in it for so many years. I had been Agent Walker for so many years. She had accepted her fate without fully understanding it. But I understand it now: I just can't let myself forget, slip back into the mindset of the fly-bottle, back into accepting the prison, losing sight of the opening…

Chuck has to be safe. We are on a journey together. I need him. But...he needs me too. I was wrong to think that I was poison for him. I just...I activate...him. I catalyze him. Each of us makes the other more alive, makes the other better. I want to spend my life... _bettering_...with him. Yes, Chuck, yes: I will marry you. I can fly straight up. I have been. I have. I can. I can escape this fly-bottle, even if I am back in it now…

I will find you and get back out. I know there is a way out… Fly-bottle… Trap… Escape...

* * *

Sarah realized she had nodded off. She heard shouts, muffled, from out in the compound. _What?_ Betting on her fight had begun. The crowd was assembling. She took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes. She had dozed off cross-legged, so she stood and stretched.

She had not killed the second doorman. There had been no need to kill him, other than Agent Walker's normal zeal for perfection, completed missions. Sarah was so tired of death. Tired of death, and just tired. The nap seemed to make that worse.

She would have to kill the champion to get to Chuck. Of course, he would be trying to kill her. Kill or be killed. Kill or be...likely...worse...

Why did her path closer to Chuck have to make her feel farther from him?

She needed to push thoughts and feelings out of her mind. This pit fight was, for her, likely not just kill or be killed. She was out beyond the edges of civilization here, out on the limits of...limits.

If she lost, the champion might have other plans for her before he killed her. The mob of onlookers might make demands. Something worse than death, something she had also faced before - a dark possibility that haunted every female agent particularly.

Sarah could hear the betting outside, the nature of the bets, even muffled, and they were not simply bets about her death or how quickly it might come.

Still, escaping now, running from the fight, never crossed Sarah's mind. She was going to win. She was going to find Chuck. The only way to do that was to run these risks.

Alone. Run them alone, as she had almost always done.

ooOoo

The woman who had wrapped Sarah's hands came to lead her to the pit. The noise outside was loud, but when Sarah stepped into the slanting afternoon sunlight, it became almost deafening. Sarah had a couple of times been in settings like this, but never felt the clamoring fury around her she did now. She thought of Chuck, of watching _Lord of the Rings._ The shrieking of the _Nazgul. Hungry._ The sound surrounded her, thick and warm, like clotting blood, almost choking her. She marched toward the pit, her eyes on the ground.

When she got there, the first thing she noticed was a snake, a King Cobra, loose, deliberately loose, in the pit. _Jesus, as if the champion weren't enough._ The snake was addled by having been tormented, it seemed, and probably by the cacophony of vibrations around it, cheering and stomping. Not aggressive, perhaps, but easily provoked to strike.

She looked from the snake to the champion, although she was not sure she had changed biological classifications. He looked like a snake too, covered in tattoos that looked, at a distance, like scales, scaly. His head was mostly shaved, only an area on the back of his head had hair, the base of his long ponytail, giving his head an elongated, serpent-like shape.

As she looked more closely, she could see that he was not really any larger than she - and that worried her. She had actually hoped to face a somewhat larger man, not as big as the doormen or Colt, perhaps, but someone slower, someone who would be tempted to trust to brute strength. Watching the champion move in the pit immediately convinced Sarah that if she had a speed advantage, it would be slim, at best. But, she also realized, she would have a reach advantage, particularly in kicks: her legs were much longer than the champions. If she could dictate the right sort of melee, she could capitalize on that advantage.

A man opened the gate to the pit and Sarah stepped down, down into it. Above her, the man she had made the deal with, the man who ran the compound, took his catbird seat. The intensity of the mob rocketed. Screams became more heated; the mob crowded the top of the fence, eager to see blood, pain, and death.

The gate closed behind Sarah. She heard the hiss of the snake and the cry of the champion.

The fight began.

* * *

My adrenaline spikes, compensating for my exhaustion. The champion presses an attack immediately, trying to understand me, who he is fighting. But his attack forces him to reveal himself to me, as much as my defense forces me to reveal myself to him. He is _fast._ I am faster but the adrenaline will only last for a little while. I need to press my advantages while I have them. I engage him with a kick that half-lands; his, though, wholly misses. One for me.

For a moment, the fight proceeds at a blurring pace, neither of us managing any clean strike. I try to stay out of his arm's reach, try to land kicks. I hit finally with a couple. He has slowed a bit, become more absorbed by defending himself than he was, less grinningly confident. His face is now a grimace. He fully intends to kill me. Am I as committed to killing him? That may end up being the difference between us; his advantage over me. We dance dangerously around each other. He forces me to the fence with a furious flurry of blows: all I can do is defend myself. But I use the fence to my advantage, leaping up, pushing off it, flipping over him, in effect.

He did not see that coming. Before he adjusts, I hit him. One punch. I hear him grunt in pain. My adrenaline is almost gone. I can feel the telltale weight of my fists. I crowd him. Another punch. Another grunt of pain, less suppressed. That one hurt him. Another. Another. More pain. I can smell him, the sweat, the blood. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I register the cobra's hiss. I lunge forward, striking again, pouring all my desperation, all my fear, all my hope, all the weight I can bring to bear into one more punch. He crumbles, goes down into the loose dirt of the pit.

I hear the crowd roar in surprise, and then crow in delight, as they change sides. Ultimately, they are on death's side, neither the champion's nor mine - except as one of us is the killer, the death-deliverer. They see me like that now. Expect me to deliver. They roar for me to kill him. _Hungry._ I have to kill him.

I hesitate. Just for a split second, the twinkling of an eye. Before delivering the _coup de grace_ , I hesitate. I, Sarah, hesitate. I don't have to do this.

The champion throws a fistful of dirt into my face, into my eyes. I am blinded. I fall back a step. I can hear him rising. Blows land. Hard, painful. I hear my own groan. I stumble, fall supine in the loose dirt, clawing at my eyes, trying to regain my vision.

I manage a blurry peek. I can see that the champion is standing. He catches something thrown to him; it flashes sunlight as it arcs through the air. A knife, it must be a knife. My signature weapon. It will write my finish. I continue to claw at my eyes, trying unsuccessfully to crawl backward in the loose dirt. I manage little distance. I am going to die.

Chuck is going to die.

That makes me infinitely sadder than my own death. I do not want to die but death has been my companion since Jenny signed Sarah's name to Graham's Faustian, hellish bargain. I will die in the pit. In the fly-bottle. Dad: "So they eventually die in the bottle…"

ooOoo

The noise of the crowd is replaced by a differently deafening...silence. _Am I dead_?

A gunshot.

"Sarah!"

Morgan? "Morgan?" I hear someone else in the pit. It is Morgan. Morgan is in Thailand. In the pit. In the fly-bottle. _Morgan!_ I am not alone. He puts a canteen in my hands. _How did he find me?_ I splash water in my eyes. My vision clears. It is Morgan. I am not alone.

"How did you find me?"

"Are you kidding? Half of Thailand is talking about the giant blond she-male that destroyed their towns…"

 _She-male? Funny. Funny?_

And then I see Casey. They came. Both of them. They came for me. They came for Chuck. I left them behind and they came anyway. The weight of my hands decreases. I feel less tired. Morgan is muttering about the cobra. I move to Casey, the fight momentarily stopped. Casey must have shot the knife from the champion's hand. Casey looks at me and I am reminded that he has come to know me. Not as well as Chuck, but still…he knows me. Other people, people I care about, know me and care about me.

He sees my injuries, the exhaustion subordinate to renewed hope in my eyes. He knows what was about to happen to me, would have happened if he had not intervened. Dead. Maybe worse.

He tries to convince me to leave. But I cannot go. I have to finish the fight. I have to know where the Belgian is. There is no way Chuck can hold on much longer.

I tell Casey I am staying. I look up to the catbird seat and I tell the man I am going to finish the fight.

 _I'm staying, fighting. I'm not alone._

ooOoo

I am cheered, buoyed up, by Casey and Morgan. Knowing they are here. That they are risking themselves for me, for Chuck. For us. Please hang on, Chuck, my love. I _am_ coming.

ooOoo

We engage again. The fact that Casey and Morgan showed up, that they interrupted the fight, seems to have thrown the champion off. He thought I was alone too. That he was the one with friends. _Stupid_. They would have cheered for me to kill him, still will, if it comes to that. I do not know where my renewed strength comes from. Maybe it is because I know that I am not Agent Walker. I can do what she can do. But I am not what she was: alone, terrified of human contact because of the human cost it would exact. Afraid to touch or be touched, with more in common with her terminated targets than with other living human beings. Agent Walker had been too long alone with death. I have a home, a life; I am living. I am not blind. Morgan helped me wash my eyes. I am not numb. Chuck has reanimated my heart. I am not alone. Casey is my partner. I have a family, Ellie, and Devon. And Mary...Frost. Even Frost. I have mourned Stephen Bartowski. Family. I only need to remember who I now am. Sarah Walker, Chuck's Sarah. 'Agent' is my title, still; it does not exhaust my station in the world. It no longer defines me. Not close.

I am not here to save an asset. I am not here to save a fellow agent. I am not here to save the Intersect. I am here to save my guy. This is not a mission, this is my life at stake.

I can feel the champion beginning to lose. My conviction now matches and exceeds his. Not my conviction that I will kill him. My conviction that I will win and he will lose. I am right and he is wrong. I have something to fight for now; he is fighting for the sake of fighting, perhaps for glory. Whatever he is fighting for, it is not enough. He is losing his conviction that he will win.

I land a heavy blow. Another. Another. Another. I hit him in the face; his head snaps back. I can see his eyes glaze over, his hold on consciousness weakens. Another. Another. Blood, sweat. I land a last, vicious blow, intending to end this. I drive him into the loose dirt of the pit. He tries to get up then he loses consciousness. He loses. There is a howl for blood. I am to kill him. But I will not do it. I turn to the man above me and demand what I have won - the location of the Belgian. He looks at the champion and looks at me. It takes a moment. The crowd begins to quiet. Eventually, he nods.

We are done. He will tell me.

I win.

* * *

The three of them, Sarah, Casey, and Morgan loaded into the larger, intact vehicle that Casey and Morgan had driven to the compound. They had a location for the Belgian. They could be there before dawn; hit him while it was still dark. Sarah's frame was trembling again - hope and exhaustion stretching her between them, stretching her so thin she was not sure she would not tear.

Close. She was close. She had feared she might never find him. He was not far away. Casey had, being Casey, come well supplied with weapons. The two of them, Sarah and Casey, were a formidable team - and they had Morgan too.

Morgan got in the back of the vehicle. Sarah climbed in the front with Casey. Casey reached into the floorboard behind the driver's seat and pulled up a blanket, rolled up and belted. Although it was the jungle, and hot and wet, he had seen her tremble. He held it out to her.

"Thanks, Casey."

"Glad we found you, Walker. We'll get there in time. We'll get to him." He paused for a moment, consulting a map and a GPS. He started the engine and wheeled them out of the muddy lot and onto the ribbon of dirt that served as a road. The headlights were bright, cutting through the dark. "A couple of hours, give or take. Then we will have to shut this down and go on foot. If what we were told is right, the Belgian's holed up in a building on the other side of a river. We'll have to cross to get to Chuck."

Sarah pulled the blanket around her, trembling again. Casey reached over with one hand to tuck it around her bare shoulder. She was bruised and stiff from the fight, her hands aching and her knuckles raw, oozing blood and water.

"Gotta say it, Walker, you sure carved Chuck's name in the backside of Thailand. Bombs away in Nana Plaza, bar fights up and down the streets of Khlong Toei...We passed a low-hanging treehouse made of a sedan, and another sedan, tires shot, on the opposite side of the road. Morgan claimed he saw a sumo wrestler wobble out of the jungle, but I don't believe him - do I?"

Sarah shrugged, non-committal. Casey went on. "Are you going to be okay, Walker?"

"As long as he is."

Casey sat in a long silence. "Sorry, Sarah, but what if he isn't?"

 _Sarah?_ "Then I am done. Done with Beckman, done with the CIA, done with spying. I vanish."

Casey chewed on the inside of his cheek. "Do you mean…?"

"No, Casey. No. I love Chuck too much to do that. Even if he were gone, I couldn't forfeit his faith in me. It would be a betrayal. I'd find some kind of life for myself but it would be as far as I could get from this life. From death."

"Would we...stay in touch?"

"You are not just my partner, John...you are my friend. Yes, we'd stay in touch." She turned from looking out the windshield to looking at him, half-smiling. "I don't want to lose my fluency in _grunt_."

Casey grunted, turned the wheel, dodging a hole in the road. He chuckled. "Good to know it. Alex and I...we'd visit."

Sarah's smile grew despite her trembling. "How's she?"

"Fine, when I left. Annoyed and worried that I was taking Morgan, but he was not going to be left behind."

"I'm glad he's here, John. I'm glad you are. I'm sorry about...how I left. I...I…"

"I know, Walker. Old habits die hard. Changes take time. Alex keeps telling me that. I know I am not the...dad I should be yet. I'm years and years behind."

Sarah chuckled, ruefully but gently. "We both are, Casey. We're making up ground but...well, Rome was not unbuilt in a day."

"Really, Walker? 'Rome unbuilt…'? Releasing your inner word nerd, are you?"

She smiled, letting her head fall back against the headrest, letting herself go limp and pulling the blanket closer around her. "Oh, I'm positively full of words, Casey, but no one but Chuck seems to know. A vast hive of busy, buzzing internal monologue."

He glanced at her then back to the road. "Sure, Walker, sure. Just like my grunts are covering unvoiced Shakespearean musings."

"'Unvoiced Shakespearean musings' sounds like a bit of Shakespearean musing, Casey."

He only grunted and drove on.

ooOoo

They stopped briefly. Casey had to relieve himself. He walked off into the vegetation on the side of the road, leaving the engine running, the lights up. Morgan moved from the very back into the rear seat. He reached out and touched Sarah gently on the shoulder.

She turned. She had been awake. Sleep eluded her. "What is it, Morgan?"

"He's gonna be okay, Sarah. I know it. I can feel it. It's more of the twin thing…"

She reached up and squeezed his hand. "Thanks, Morgan. And thanks for telling me about the proposal. I'm going to say _yes._ "

She heard Morgan chuckle softly. "You know, Sarah, you are the only one, other than Chuck, who might have wondered about that. I've known since I thought Devon's ring for Ellie was Chuck's ring for you…"

She turned around to see his face. "Really?"

Morgan nodded. "Look, Sarah, I won't say I understood what was going on with you two half the time, or that I didn't start to wonder during those weird days when Hannah and Shaw...well, I did start to wonder. But deep down, I think maybe I even knew when Chuck dropped the phone during 'Vicki Vale'.

"When Chuck is beside you, Sarah, he comes into...I don't know...into focus, I guess. And when you are beside him, it's like you are...full of lights...I guess that all sounds kinda lame."

"No, Morgan, it doesn't. Thank you for it."

"No problem. I'm just glad we found you. And, man, a cobra. Wait 'til I tell Chuck!"

"Tell him what, Morgan?" Casey climbed back into the driver's seat.

"Just about Sarah. About how amazing she was today."

"Well, hang on. We ain't done yet."

ooOoo

Casey stopped the vehicle. He shut off the engine. It was time. At last. Time to save Chuck. Sarah unwrapped herself and put the blanket in the backseat. Willing her trembling to stop, she got out.

* * *

 **A/N2** I intended to take this all the way through the rescue but it got too long and I didn't want to post an 8K word chapter. So, hang on. The rescue and its non-canon aftermath next time in Chapter 46, "Darkened Engagements (Six): Reeling".

Thanks to my pre-readers, David Carner, WvonB and Chesterton.


	46. Darkened Engagements (Six)

**A/N1** The rescue and some non-canon aftermath. I alter the sequence of events in the rescue just slightly. More toggling in Sarah's POV.

 _Phase 3._ My favorite episode. Maybe it shows.

Thanks so much for sticking around for a long and difficult story!

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

 _Darkened Engagements (Part Six)_ :

 _Reeling_

* * *

Twist away, now twist and shout  
The earth it moves too slow  
But the earth is all we know  
We pay to play the human way  
Twist away the gates of steel

A man is real, not made of steel

\- Devo, _Gates of Steel_

* * *

Part One: Crossing Over

* * *

Casey and Morgan came around the vehicle to stand with Sarah. The night was dark, humidity hanging in the air so thick that walking felt vaguely like wading. The moon was enshrouded in a misty veil, hanging damp and heavy over a cacophony of jungle sounds.

Casey consulted the GPS and his compass. Sarah stood and watched him, waiting, choking back her anxiety. Morgan looked from one to the other, expectantly.

Finally, Casey looked up. "Ok, we've got a bit of a walk ahead of us. I think we can stay near the road for a while. There must be a bridge because the Belgian is supposed to be on the other side of the river and he had to get there, get supplies in and out.

"That'll be the place that'll be guarded. Seriously guarded. Beyond, behind the Belgian, is heavy jungle. Doubt he's wasting many guards on that side. Doesn't help us, though, because it would take us too long to try to cross, circle around through the jungle. The sun'd be up by the time we got there."

He checked with Sarah and she nodded. "Our best bet is to cross the river near the bridge and hit them by surprise, in the dark. Got no reason to suspect we are coming. The pit boss hates the Belgian," Sarah nodded in agreement, "so I don't worry about any double-cross."

Casey went to the rear of the vehicle and began to retrieve weapons. Sarah had her S&W and her knives. She took the automatic rifle Casey handed her and slung it on her shoulder. Morgan shouldered a couple of others and his backpack, into which Casey had shoved a medical kit. Casey strapped on a couple of pistols, grabbed a couple of mini-grenades and a couple of rifles. He seemed sad that any of the weapons had to remain behind.

They started up the road on foot, the hazy moon just bright enough for them to find their way without any lights.

ooOoo

"Stop!" Casey whispered, his hand up in the air as he did as he ordered them to do. Morgan bumped into Sarah.

"Sorry," Morgan offered softly.

Sarah was actually glad for it; she had drifted into a haziness matching the moon's, her heart heavy and damp, thumping wetly with fear and hope in alternating splashy beats. Refocusing, she looked at Casey. She was too tired to think; she prayed she was not too tired to act.

They moved off the road and into the jungle, immediately in the grasp of the vegetation, the darkness inkier because of the canopy of leaves. They worked slowly, too slowly for Sarah's tortured nerves, but she understood. They had to be quiet. After a short while, they could see the moving moonlight-white lit surface of the river, and could see the lights of the Belgian's encampment across it.

 _Chuck._

Sarah had a sudden, overwhelming olfactory hallucination, the scent of his skin against hers as they made love. It was not, at that moment, erotic; it was a memory and a promise, yesterday and tomorrow. The scent of home.

 _I'm here, Chuck! Please be okay._

Casey and Morgan fell into a spat of hoarse whispers about the plan. And then Sarah heard the phrase, "The Magnet". She saw Morgan's shoulders tense, then drop. He nodded. He took off the guns and then his backpack and, glancing with embarrassment at Sarah, he took off his shirt and pants. Had she the energy, Sarah would have chuckled, not at Morgan, _per se_ , but at the bizarre spectacle of him crouched in his underwear in the midst of a Thai jungle.

Morgan quickly slipped on a t-shirt and shorts and a silly cap. Casey gestured, pointing, and Morgan sighted along his outstretched arm. Sarah followed suit. There was the bridge Casey anticipated. No one was on it, so far as Sarah could tell, but there was a fire burning near its end and a group of weaponed men silhouetted against the blaze, demons against hellfire.

Sarah knew Morgan was no coward. He had faced tigers and electroshock death. But this was a _cold call_ , so to speak. A walk into the maw, into _who knew what_. But Morgan put the backpack back on his shoulders and headed for the bridge. He ambled along upright, looking around, giving the impression of a lost hipster hiker. Sarah hoped worked. He certainly did not look like a threat. That was Casey's job and Sarah's.

Casey watched Morgan, a hint of concern in his eyes, then he focused on Sarah. He waited. He was going to let this be her call. Morgan was the distraction. Someone needed to swim the river and hit the men around the fire.

Sarah knew Casey was not a big fan of water. She also knew that stealth was more her strength than his. "I'll cross, Casey. You move to the end of the bridge. Don't start across 'til I am almost to the other side. You're the second wave."

Casey nodded hard. "My thoughts too. "

Sarah pulled her ponytail back and tightened the band holding it. She took out her combat knife and put it between her teeth. She walked to the water's edge and slipped soundlessly into it. The river was, it turned out, shallow. She half-swam, half-walked as she crossed it, keeping her body below the surface of the water and only her head above water. Because it was shallow, the water was not as cold as Sarah anticipated. It was not warm, but it did not start her trembling again either.

As she swam, she felt the unmistakable, subtle pinprick of a leech bite. Several. Under her pants, along her legs, beneath her shirt. She had been bitten by leeches before and knew that there was little pain. The worse part was the knowledge that they were on her, gorging on her blood. She made herself focus on the campfire as she got nearer, and on being silent. The leeches were welcome to their meal. She would see to them later. She would gladly pay blood for Chuck, whole and safe.

Morgan had managed not to get shot. But Sarah could see that the guards were getting increasingly agitated, nervous. A couple looked away from Morgan and out toward the water. Sarah sank beneath the surface, holding her breath. But she kept moving. Her need for Chuck was now completely in control. It was compelling her forward, keeping her in motion when her body was too tired to move. It was an absolute demand, a bottomless need. _Chuck!_

She crouched in the water, near the bank. She had not been spotted. The light campfire weakened the night vision of the guards; Sarah was careful not to look at it directly or for any length of time.

No guard was now looking toward the river. At the bank, Sarah rose from the water. She stepped into the light of the fire. Inky water ran from her body, her hair. She took her knife out of her mouth just as a guard spotted her. But instead of raising his gun, she shouted, raising his voice: "It's the giant blond she-male! Run away!"

They scattered before her like she was a dripping Valkyrie.

' _She-male? Run away!' Funny. Funny?_

Sarah charged the remaining guard, delivering a kick that sent him into unconsciousness. She turned and started toward the main building, the one with lights on inside it. She heard Casey arrive behind her and heard him muttering about _the she-male._ Sarah did not hear more. She was in a dead sprint to the building, all of her remaining energy moving her feet as fast as they would go.

She kicked open the door. The Belgian had been about to grab it. His face froze in terror.

"I've been looking for you," Sarah informed him as she attacked him savagely, kicking his gun from his hand and then pistol-whipping him with hers face-first into a window. He went into it with a shower of splinters and blood. Sarah did not watch him crumple to the floor.

 _Chuck._ "Chuck!" He was there. He was alive. In a hospital gown and in some gruesome-looking barber's chair, glowing red electrodes attached to him. But he was there, he was alive.

A man in a lab coat told her as she rushed past him that she was too late. That Chuck was too far gone. She did not listen. She reached him. Touched him. She touched him for the first time in days. Tears filled her eyes. His skin was warm as she fumbled, unhooking the electrodes. Behind her, she heard Casey tell the scientist to shut up.

"Chuck," she sobbed, "Chuck, please wake up. I'm here, Chuck. I'm here!" She pleaded with him to wake up.

* * *

Please, my love, wake up! I need you. Please, Chuck. Come on, come back to me. Where are you? I'm here. I'm _here_. I love you. I came for you, as I promised I always would. Please tell me I am here in time.

He's not waking up...

If they've hurt you, Chuck, I will burn this place to the ground; I will salt the earth. Charred wood and smoking bones. Chuck! Please! If they've hurt you…

I feel like leeches attack my heart, gorging themselves on my heart's blood, my love, and my fear. No numbing agents with the bites, just the pain of the wound, the flow of my life away from me…

If they've hurt you, they will not see the sunrise...

* * *

Morgan's voice broke into Sarah's grief, Agent Walker's momentary madness.

"Sarah, tell him what you told me before…He'll hear that, I know it. This is your chance. Don't...don't be Sarah Walker the spy, be Sarah Walker the girlfriend."

Sarah half-turned to Morgan. He was right. She needed to be Sarah, Chuck's Sarah. She needed to be herself. The woman at home, who was in their bedroom, in their bed - not the woman who fought her way across Thailand. She needed to call Chuck back to her, from wherever the Belgian had sent him.

* * *

Chuck's picture was in my suitcase, my secret place, for so many months. I have loved him for so long. And he has loved me for so long.

He is the heart of my heart; I am the heart of his heart.

I am here, Chuck. Not just in Thailand, but in Burbank, _everywhere_. Everywhere you are, I am. I am waiting for you, Chuck. In our bedroom, seated on our bed. Our secret place, our Holy of Holies. I want to be there again with you. I want to be there always with you. Come to me; find me. I found you. Find me! Come for me, Chuck! Always come for me!

* * *

"Chuck, please. I love you. Please wake up. I have so much that I want to tell you." Sarah paused, almost unable to go on. She was ripping apart; she could feel it. Stretched too far. Fear and hope dividing her, unable to hold them together, herself together.

* * *

Leeches on my heart. Losing blood...I have to tell him...so much to tell him. I have told him so little and yet he loves me. I want to talk, Chuck, talk to you, tell you things.

* * *

"I found your proposal plan. You were going to do it on the beach in Malibu where we watched the sunrise after our first date." Sarah could see Chuck's eyes moving behind his eyelids.

* * *

It was our first date, Chuck. I was _never_ cover dating you, not even when I told myself I was. I was covering our dates from myself. But they were real. Every last one. Real. Always real. You are my reality, Chuck..

* * *

"There were several race cars involved. Chuck, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don't care if you have the Intersect or not. Without you, I'm nobody. I'm nothing but a spy." Sarah's voice sank with desperation. She scanned Chuck's face for some sign.

* * *

Without you, Chuck, I am a mere creation, an artificial, not a natural being - the product of two men, one who harmed me thinking he was doing me good, the other who trained me as a sacrifice to 'the Greater Good'. Together, they made me... _nothing._ Just a spy. Not a spy like, say, Carina, who knew another life and turned away from it. I never knew another life. My life with Dad was basic spy training, a preschool Farm. And then Graham. A prisoner in a cell I tried to love - a cell in which I tried madly to excel.

My fly-bottle life.

I am free now, Chuck. I have become somebody, something more than a spy. Someone more than Agent Walker. I am here. I can fly straight up. I have. I am here.

* * *

"Come back to me, Chuck. I'm going to marry you."

Sarah leaned down to kiss Chuck. Her lips, cold and wet, against his, warm and dry. She kissed her groom. She heard Morgan behind her, shifting on his feet, their officiant. Dirty, exhausted, terrified, she stood with Chuck's face cupped in her hands, his bride in black and river water.

And Chuck opened his eyes. It was the greatest sight Sarah had ever seen. She gave a gasp of relief and pleasure and then Chuck was kissing her, kissing her back.

Morgan pronounced Chuck okay, pronounced them okay.

Agent Walker surrendered the field entirely and Sarah Bartowski held Chuck. She knew the full measure of her devotion to him. She knew who exactly who she was.

* * *

The leeches fall from my heart. It beats freely again. The heart of my heart is in my arms. I am home.

* * *

Part Two: Home Again?

* * *

They drove in the dark.

And they drove in the dawn.

It was mid-afternoon when they reached Bangkok. A medical team was waiting for them at a CIA facility. Casey had called Beckman and she arranged it. They entered the facility through a backdoor.

Chuck had been in and out of consciousness as they drove. When he was conscious, he seemed okay, if foggy. But he kept losing consciousness and Sarah was freaking out about it. Morgan and Casey tried to keep her calm. They helped her, but the fact that each time he woke up and saw her his eyes came into focus - that kept her calm enough to endure the ride.

The doctors wheeled Chuck into an examination room on a gurney, and all at once Sarah was without him again.

When the doors closed, her trembling returned violently. Reeling, she shuddered and collapsed, but Casey must have saw it; he caught her before she hit the floor. Casey scooping her up into his arms was the last thing she remembered.

ooOoo

She woke from a dreamless sleep. She was alone in a hospital bed. In a hospital-like room.

Alone, but not alone. There was a comic book open, face-down, in the chair near her bed. She looked at her watch. She had been asleep for hours. It was dark outside.

Her body was a toothache, head to toe. She found she could barely flex her joints and her fingers simply would not bend. The pain of trying forced her to stop and to bite her lip to keep from crying out. The warmth of the light blanket was a real comfort. She did not want to face turning it back and trying to stand, but she had to find Chuck, see Chuck.

She pushed the blanket back with her hand, not grasping it with her fingers but using her whole hand as an implement. She rolled over to the edge of the bed and managed to fall from it onto her feet. She groaned aloud.

Taking stock of herself, she realized she was in a hospital gown. Someone had bathed her. There were bruises up and down her legs and numerous, peculiarly shaped small wounds - leech bites. As much as she hated that she had collapsed, she was not unhappy to have missed the de-leeching. Her forearms were also badly bruised. There were small wounds on her chest and on one breast. _Really glad I missed that leech removal._

She tried a tentative step and hissed at the pain and stiffness in her legs. She was about to take a second step when the door to her room opened. Morgan was standing in the doorway. Behind him was a woman with a stethoscope and dressed in scrubs.

Morgan moved to her quickly. "Sarah, you shouldn't be up. You don't need to be up. Everything's okay. Chuck's okay. Casey's talking to him. He's been sleeping but he just woke up a little while ago. The doc here thinks he will be just fine."

The woman in scrubs walked to Sarah and looked at her. "Agent Walker, you are a determined woman. I did not expect to see you on your feet for another day or two. Frankly, your body was a war zone when you came in." The doctor turned to Morgan. "Mr. Grimes, give us a few minutes?"

Morgan scooped up his comic and left the room. The doctor watched him go then faced Sarah. "Um, not your stereotypical spy. A little on the...little...side." Her smile told Sarah she meant no harm.

"He's a fiery little guy, though, and a brave one…" Sarah looked into the doctor's eyes, her gaze underscoring her tone.

"So the big guy told me... _Casey_ , right?" Sarah nodded her head, then winced, the motion causing pains to shoot through her shoulders. The doctor checked Sarah over with a quick, practiced economy. Then she extended her hand to Sarah.

"I'm Elizabeth Withee. CIA doctor. I imagine the painkillers I gave you are wearing off. I can give you some more…" Sarah looked at the doctor's hand and then at her own swollen one. The doctor shook her head, gave Sarah an embarrassed smile, and let her hand drop. "Sorry, habit."

Sarah smiled back. "Can you give me some that won't make me drowsy?"

The doctor nodded. "Yes, but you _desperately_ need rest. I honestly have no idea how you made it here in your condition or how you are managing to stand now."

"Chuck. I need to see him. Hear his voice. Please." Elizabeth looked at Sarah and then sighed and shook her head. "Agent Walker, you are a force of nature."

Sarah closed her eyes and grimaced as she took another step. The doctor went ahead of her and opened the door, holding it.

"Call me Sarah, please," Sarah requested as she limped through the door.

ooOoo

Sarah's heart was a bass drum as she entered Chuck's room. She heard Casey chuckle as she walked through the door. A good sign. Chuck was on the bed, under a blanket, but his arms outside it, gesticulating.

He was explaining something to Casey about a dream, about her, Sarah, in the dream. He stopped when he realized she had come into the room.

His smile was narcotic; her stiffness remained but her pain abated.

She hobbled to the bed and into his arms. She groaned as he hugged her but only pulled herself closer against him. She stood there, half standing on her feet, half leaning on Chuck. She was vaguely aware of Casey leaving the room, and of the fact that they were alone.

She kissed Chuck. She kissed him as she had standing before the Bryce bomb, although the kiss was less frantic, less driven by a deadline. It was open-ended, like their future. Chuck eventually broke the kiss and scooted over. Sarah climbed into the bed beside him, although it took her a moment and a few subdued groans and grimaces.

Chuck took her hands very gently into his own, looking down at the swelling, at her shredded knuckles. She noticed that she had stitches on one forearm but she did not worry about it. She let Chuck hold her hands and she fell asleep on her side, as close against him as physics would allow.

She had found him.

ooOoo

Sarah woke to sunlight and Chuck's warm hand caressing her shoulder. "Sarah, the doctor wants to talk to us."

She opened her eyes all the way and saw Chuck, her Chuck, grinning at her. She kissed his grin. She gingerly rolled off her side and onto her back. The doctor, Elizabeth, was standing by the bed.

"I see you got some sleep, after all, Sarah." Sarah gave a small, slightly self-conscious shrug and then nodded.

"Good. You both needed rest and you clearly both rest better together." The doctor stopped for a moment and gave them a long look. "I haven't seen any real spy couples. The spies I treat for...um...complaints...even when I treat them...in tandem, are always telling me that spies don't fall in love."

Chuck hiccuped a laugh. "Well, doctor, you can take that to mean we aren't really spies or we aren't really in love - but we are. Both. At least, I am." Sarah turned a mock-glare on Chuck. He widened his eyes. " _We_ are."

"So much the worse for that conception of spies, I guess…" the doctor concluded with her own laugh. "So, I wanted to talk to you both about the results of Chuck's tests. The initial findings were all positive. I'm happy to say the tests corroborate the initial findings. I suspect you may have some dead spots in your memory, particularly of recent days, but I suspect they will eventually disappear. You may find some other mix-ups or confusions, some fogginess. There shouldn't be much and it should go away too. You are mentally resilient, Chuck. I don't know how you held out."

Chuck looked from the doctor to Sarah. "Too much to lose…I had someone in my heart, holding my head together."

Sarah felt tears sting her eyes. She blinked them back. Chuck leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. "I love you, Sarah."

Sarah snuggled against him and said her _I love you_ in a whisper against Chuck's neck.

The doctor walked to the bed and picked up first Sarah's right hand, then her left.

"I'm a little worried about your hands, Sarah. I don't think the nerves are damaged but you should have them checked again when you get back home. I've got a salve for you, and I encourage you to start using your hands and fingers for tasks as you can, so that you can start to work the soreness out. But don't try to do too much, too fast."

"When can we go home?" Chuck asked, his eagerness apparent.

"All four of you are on a flight tonight," the doctor said, checking her clipboard. "Transport to the airport will be here at 1700. We have some clothes for you."

Just as the doctor spoke, a nurse came in with two bags. "Oh," the doctor continued, "here they are. Well, I will leave you two to rest. There are toiletries in the bathroom - a shower too." The doctor suppressed a smirk and exited the room.

Sarah pushed herself up and around, sitting on the side of the bed, facing away from Chuck. Slowly, she looked back over her shoulder. toward him, giving him a bright grin. "I'm going to brush my teeth, then get in the shower, Chuck."

He furrowed his brow and nodded, not entirely sure why she had gifted him that intel. "I think I could use some help in the shower," Sarah added, waggling her eyebrows in a Chuck impersonation. "And I need something to help me work out the soreness in my hands, something to _grip_ …"

Chuck continued to study her - then his eyebrows shot up. "Oh! Oh, I might have something to offer, you know, for therapy and all."

She grinned and stood. Bruises and soreness be damned. "And all. See you _inside_ \- in a minute."

ooOoo

They had been back in Burbank for a day when Sarah put a call into Beckman. She and Chuck needed some time to themselves, a few days of R&R. Sarah had an errand she had needed to do for a long time but had kept putting off.

She made the necessary arrangements with the general. She and Chuck had three days off. After talking to Beckman, Sarah made another phone call. When she wrapped it up, Sarah bought plane tickets.

When Chuck came into Castle, Sarah was waiting for him. "How soon can you be ready to head out of town?"

"Out of town? Where are we going? I have to say, I'm not up for more travel right now - that last trip was a doozy." He gave her a lazy smile. "I was hoping to just hang out here."

"I know. But there's something I have needed to do, and I...I want to do it with you."

Chuck caught the seriousness of her tone and he reached carefully for her hand. "Is there something wrong. Do we," Chuck gulped, " _need to talk_?"

Sarah grabbed his shirt and pulled him into a quick kiss. "Well, not like that, not in a bad way. I want to talk. I want you to help me do something."

"Okay. Where are we going?"

"We are going to DC." Sarah turned and led him by the hand.

"Wait a minute. _DC_?" he asked as they climbed the stairs out of Castle.

ooOoo

Sarah stood in front of the door, Chuck beside her. The hallway was empty. She tried to shake the feeling of apprehension, even of dread, that had grown as they rode the elevator up.

She reached over and gave Chuck's hand a soft squeeze. Her own hands were getting better, healing nicely. She blew out a breath and put her key in the door.

"Welcome to the place where I used to live. My apartment, Chuck." She swung the unlocked door open.

Chuck gave her a surprised look. She had not explained what they were doing in DC, where they were going. Sarah stepped inside and turned on the light. Chuck followed her in and he shut the door.

The apartment smelled like it had been shut up for months, as it had. Sarah walked into the living room and turned on a lamp.

She turned and watched as Chuck looked around, his expression hard to read. She knew what he was seeing. The apartment was still very much as it had been when she first moved in. She had requested a furnished apartment and that was what Graham had arranged for her. There were a few things she had added, but nothing personal, nothing decorative except for a few plants, now long dead, desiccated in their pots.

The apartment was nice, the furnishings and generic artwork on the walls all nice enough. But it was not fancy or expensive or luxurious. It was ordered and desolate.

There were no photos. No knick-knacks. Nothing used or worn or broken-in. Nothing that showed a sign of being loved or cherished. Nothing homey. No visible mementos unless dust counted.

Sarah reached out to Chuck. He put his hand in hers. She led him through the apartment without any comment, turning on light as they went. Kitchen, bathroom, empty extra bedroom, Sarah's room.

She motioned for Chuck to sit on the bed. She went to the closet. There was a lone box on the top of the closet shelf. Sarah reached up and pulled it down. No clothes hung in the closet. There was an old, beat-up suitcase in one corner, an empty retiree. Chuck watched her closely as she carried the box to the bed. She sat down beside him and put the box on her other side. She took Chuck's hand in hers.

"I'm going to make myself talk now. Be patient with me." She took a deep breath as if preparing to go underwater.

"This was where I lived, officially, from early in my time in the CIA. With the exception of the dead plants, this is how it looked the day I moved in. I came and went, but this was never my home. Not that any other place was my home. I had no home." She seemed to stall for a moment but gathered herself.

"I wanted you to see me, as I was before I knew you, Chuck, I wanted you to understand...how my life was, how barren...my life was. My childhood home was broken. Until Burbank, until you - and Ellie and Devon - welcomed me into your home at Echo Park, I had never been in a real home. Not as a legitimate guest. I had been in a few on cons or while undercover, but never just as _me_.

"I know I haven't volunteered much about my past, and you have been patient, kind not to ask. But I wanted to show you this. I arranged with the new CIA Director for it to be given to some other agent. I kept it for no good reason; I never thought about it. Well other than the box. But I don't want the apartment. I came for the box."

She paused and rubbed her hand on his. "I want to show you some things."

Sarah picked up the box and lifted the lid. She saw the surprised look on Chuck's face. She knew he had expected something other than a box that looked full of junk.

"These are my treasures, Chuck. At least, the ones I thought it was safe to keep because no one could use them to identify me or use them against me in some way."

She reached into the box. She retrieved a large piece of wrinkled, folded paper. She unfolded it and handed it to him, a menu placemat from a restaurant in Reno, Nevada. There was an old stain on it. The prices revealed that it was from years ago.

"This is the first place my dad and I stopped to eat when he took me with him on his...adventures. I was excited. I thought it would be great."

Chuck looked at the items printed on the menu. "Do you remember what you had?"

Sarah gave him a small smile. She pointed. "The burger. Extra pickles."

Chuck kissed her cheek. "The girl is the mother to the woman, I see."

She grinned. Her apprehension had vanished, she felt warm and relaxed. She reached into the box again. She handed Chuck an old Bic ink pen, clear, with a blue top. "You remember meeting Gale - at the reunion?" Chuck nodded. "This is the pen her eventual husband had in his room back in high school. The one he used to write entries in his diary."

Chuck gave her a long look. "And you, missy, how did you come to have this item?"

Sarah told him. She actually told him.

It took them two hours to go through the box. When they had talked about the last of her treasures, she reached for her purse.

She opened it and dug around to find what she wanted. She showed what she found to Chuck. It was an old pocket protector of his from the Buy More. She did not explain how she had it or for how long. But she dropped it in the box and put the lid back on it.

"I'm ready to go home, Chuck."

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time as Sarah decides to rescue Frost, Chapter 47 "Darkened Engagements (Part Seven): Ice to Ice in Ice".

Thoughts?

Z


	47. Darkened Engagements (Seven)

**A/N1** We start the Volkoff infiltration; as our chapter opens, our heroine is already at Volkoff Industries.

Most of this chapter is flashback. We will wind into this somewhat slowly; please bear with me. The timeline and other things will get clearer as we go.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

 _Darkened Engagements (Part Seven)_ :

 _Ice to Ice in Ice_

* * *

Tell me your troubles and doubts  
Giving me everything inside and out and  
Love's strange so real in the dark  
Think of the tender things that we were working on

Slow change may pull us apart  
When the light gets into your heart, baby

Don't you, forget about me  
Don't, don't, don't, don't  
Don't you, forget about me

Will you stand above me?  
Look my way, never love me  
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling  
Down, down, down

Will you recognize me?  
Call my name or walk on by  
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling  
Down, down, down, down

\- Simple Minds, _Don't You (Forget About Me)_

* * *

 _Russia, rain. Cold and bleak and desperate_

* * *

Distant.

Distances...

Sarah's life had been about distance, distances. Distance within, distance without. Distance from herself and distance from others.

Closeness.

Close...

It had _all_ been so close: practically in her hand, on her hand: the ring, the proposal, the engagement. She had stood beneath the moonlight in France, stood before the man of her dreams, and he had been about to ask - no, he had been asking. Marriage. She had felt so close to him, so close to finally saying _yes,_ saying it for real.

And Beckman chose that very moment to enact Sarah's plan.

Sarah had asked Beckman to help her. To engineer a mission, a mission designed to take down Alexei Volkoff. That was not the ultimate mission objective for Sarah, however. Sarah's ultimate objective was Mary Bartowski, Chuck's mom. Bringing her home, home to Chuck and to Ellie.

Sarah had seen it, the faraway look in Chuck's eyes. It was there in Ellie's too. The thought that Mary was out there - in Russia - with Volkoff. Keeping them safe by remaining at Volkoff's side. She knew they wondered what cost that exacted from Mary. They had to wonder what remaining at Volkoff's side involved, since Volkoff (in his twisted way) loved Mary, or, better, loved _Frost._ What did Frost have to do to keep that love alive?

Sarah knew female agents who had crossed over. Gone native. Become the enemy.

Buried for too long beneath the weight of the cover, the stress and strain of the lies, no break from falsehood, they had found themselves inching toward and eventually on the other side of lines they never believed they would cross, never intended to cross.

Once on the other side, it became easier to start believing your own lies, to start conniving at your own illusion, finding it agreeable, treating it as real. Making it real. Almost always the agents who had crossed over had been sleeping with their marks. That was why seduction missions were not intended actually to involve sex. No matter how many times an agent repeated the mantra - "It doesn't mean anything; it is just physical, just bodily action and reaction, no real emotion, no real intimacy" - the agent began to be involved more fully, involved emotionally and psychologically with the mark. No one, not even a spy, can treat her body as a mere cover: the bodily, the emotional and the psychological are mixed together, internal to each other, despite the ability to talk or think of them as separate. The agent was all too likely to go to bed loyal and rise an infidel. What our _bodies_ do, other than mere reflex and brute functions (like digesting) are the things _we_ do. Sarah had figured that out long ago; it was why she had not crossed those lines.

Sarah did not know what Mary had done, what compromises she had made, what crossings, if any, but Mary had been at Volkoff's side for a long, long time. The situation was beyond bizarre. It made Sarah's head and heart hurt to dwell on it.

She looked into the mirror again, at her own photonegative self.

Photo negative.

The Ice Queen.

Blond hair. Now black hair. Chromatic clothes. Now black clothes.

 _Distance. Russia. Once again the Ice Queen and now in the Ice Kingdom._ She looked out the window of her room: rain, rain, and more rain, an unrelenting icy drizzle.

Sarah was her own worst fear. In the mirror.

For years, she had been afraid to leave the CIA for fear that if she did, she would end an assassin-for-hire, fall back on her tradecraft, the only thing she really knew, the horror at which she excelled.

Now she was Volkoff's to command.

Rain kept falling.

* * *

 _Earlier, Confinement and Barcelona_

* * *

That was the plan she had outlined to Beckman, a plan to convince Volkoff that Sarah had gone solo, rogue, for-hire. She and Beckman had agreed to the basic plan, but Sarah had left it up to Beckman when and how to implement it.

Beckman chose to implement it just before Chuck could finish proposing. _Of course._ _Shit. Will I never get my chance to say_ yes _?_

Beckman in effect framed Sarah and then allowed Sarah to escape. Cagy as always, Beckman had involved French intelligence in Sarah's capture and return to the US, and Beckman then alerted other intelligence agencies around the world, but particularly in Europe, after Sarah's 'escape' from capture'.

It was a very dangerous game to play. On the one hand, it made Sarah's betrayal look real, and so gave her a chance to get Volkoff to buy it, but it also made her past allies her enemies and limited her contacts to those loyal to her but not to the US or the CIA.

Beckman moved Sarah into hiding after the 'escape'. During those days of confinement, under strict orders to contact no one, especially not Chuck, Sarah thought she would go crazy. She was doing this for Chuck (and Ellie), for the family she now thought of as her own, but she had sprung this on Chuck - she gave him no real chance to talk to her about it. She wanted to do this for him, to put her past to use, the past that was so often such an obstacle between them, to use it to help his future, their future. Chuck was never going to be at ease so long as Mary was with Volkoff. She tried to explain briefly, to tell him that she was going to have to be who she used to be again. But then she was gone, taken away by Beckman's guards. Her last look had been at Chuck, lost.

That lost look was tormenting her. Because once confined, she realized that she had in a sense repeated Frost's abandonment of Chuck in order to bring Frost home. She walked away from the man she loved, from his sunlit smile, and into the dark, leaving him alone. In one form or another, that had been his fear with her all along (and hers with him): that she would leave him. Whatever her reasons, she should have understood better what she would force Chuck to re-live and remember, how hard it would be for him to watch her go and to endure her being gone.

Beckman used the period of Sarah's confinement creatively. She found means to link various current murders or assassinations or small-scale terrorist attacks to Sarah, claiming the kills or incidents as Sarah's and spreading the word that a new for-hire assassin of remarkable talent was available for the right price. Keeping Sarah out of sight made it easier to believe she was out there, flitting around, a fast-moving and lethal ghost. Beckman wanted to be sure no one saw her accidentally and could place her somewhere that would prevent a claim.

After a couple of weeks, feelers about assignments began to come in. Beckman's plan was working: people believed Graham's Enforcer was now an independent contractor.

 _It sickens me how easy it is for people to believe that. But I feared it myself. It was a way things could have gone._

Beckman then released Sarah from confinement and sent her to Europe, where, over the course of another couple of weeks, Sarah staged two assassinations. Each was faked, the target taken into custody and 'killed' by an explosion in one case and fire in the other so that the lack of a corpse made sense. Both the targets were medium-level CIA operatives. They were both shuttled into confinements of their own and both were going to be given new assignments once Sarah's mission ended. Both had volunteered for the subterfuge on the promise of better eventual postings. Sarah allowed herself to be seen - in disguise of course, but still - so as to body out the earlier claims.

Rumors about Sarah doubled, tripled after that. Inquiries by back channels kept coming. It looked as though Sarah had no only become an independent contractor, but that she was determined to show that she was the best one available. Her 'kills' were coming fast - none, perhaps, particularly splashy in terms of the victim or target - but they were efficient, pinpoint, clean. Carried out with surgical focus. No one but the target hurt, limited collateral damage. She was the ghost she had always been taken to be, in and out at the speed of death.

At that point, Beckman set Sarah up in Barcelona. It was time for her to become available to Volkoff. So far, no one connected with Volkoff had tried to make contact but known Volkoff associates were asking questions. Sarah was going to have to play a waiting game. A missing game. She missed Chuck so much her stomach ached. She could barely eat. She stayed in her apartment and watched Spanish television.

Beckman finally called. A Volkoff associate had reached out. Volkoff was interested in the new player, interested in perhaps engaging her services. But the woman, known as Albina, wanted a face-to-face meeting before Sarah could parlay with Volkoff. She demanded that Sarah meet her at Park Gűell, overlooking the city. Sarah, of course, agreed to the meet.

Sarah got in a cab an hour or so before the meet was scheduled. As the driver twisted through the streets of Barcelona, Sarah reviewed what she knew about Albina and what Beckman had been able to add to that.

Albina had been in Volkoff's orbit for years. She was an assassin herself and had been a material aid to Volkoff as he made his brutal climb to the top of the underworld. She was older than him but had been rumored to be his lover. She was Frost before Frost. Albina was coldly efficient, but her kills tended to be brutal - blunt-instrument affairs with lots of gore. Each kill seemed a scene of rage.

At a certain point, Albina was demoted by Volkoff, fell out of favor and presumably was barred from his bed. She had taken it badly but had eventually accepted it. Sarah now knew that the demotion was more or less simultaneous with Frost's arrival. Albina was no longer selling kills. She had vanished, although it seemed that she still did occasional favors for Volkoff.

Sarah was glad the meeting was in a public park and in the early afternoon. They were to meet on the long benches atop the hill, overlooking the Park, designed by Gaudi, and overlooking Barcelona itself. It was unlikely Albina intended to do anything but interview Sarah. But Albina would be hard to sell, Volkoff had no doubt chosen her for precisely that reason. Whatever Sarah's recent history suggested, he had seen her in Burbank.

He was not going to simply accept her apparent changes: he would need to be convinced. Of course, Sarah was not going to allow Albina to make the final decision. If need be, she would storm Volkoff's headquarters demanding a meeting. And even if Sarah convinced Albina, and Albina conveyed her impression to Volkoff, Volkoff would still make his own decision. He was not giving that power to Albina - she was, at best, an advisor.

Sarah got out of the cab and walked into the Park, joining the long line of people buying tickets. A man was selling earrings next to the line, the earrings hooked into the fabric of an open umbrella for display. They were cheap, replicas of Gaudi designs found in the Park. But Sarah saw a pair, deep blue, that she thought Chuck would like on her and she bought them, the purchase making her feel, for a moment, less distant from him.

Beckman had kept them out of contact with each other - and Sarah had gone along with it, even though she might have been able to talk Beckman into allowing it. She knew that she needed not to allow herself to see him. The time away from him had done what she wanted and feared. It brought Agent Walker back into play. Sarah needed her now and she knew that if she saw Chuck, especially early on, it might cost her her resolve, might send Agent Walker away.

Sarah was deeply troubled by it all, however. After the Belgian had taken Chuck, Sarah had involuntarily become Agent Walker. That she did it against her will, unplanned, paradoxically seemed to make putting her away easier after she had rescued Chuck. But now she had put on her old self willingly, voluntarily, and she worried that having done so would make it harder to put her off when the time came. Frost had no doubt intended to come home too - but she never had. Sarah had to hope she could hold out against reverting to her old self even while she voluntarily flirted with her old self, chose to embody her.

Sarah hiked up the curving path among flowers and then up several sets of steps to the top of the garden. She followed a dirt path around to the meeting place, dodging strips of tape cordoning off areas of construction and repair. Sarah had seen an old photo of Albina, grainy and taken many years before, probably around the time of her displacement by Frost. She was a tall woman, thin, with white blond hair and dark eyes.

Sarah walked onto the overlook. People milled about, tourists taking pictures, couples snuggling in the cool air. Sarah looked out over the city, past the odd Gaudi spires, checked blue and white, and at the tops of the city's buildings. She had an intense, immediate desire to be there with Chuck, a couple among the couples, enjoying the view with nothing ahead of them but tapas and wine, and a leisurely evening dallying in bed together. She let her mind wander in the fantasy for a moment.

"Walker?"

"Albina?"

Sarah, despite her fantasizing, had felt Albina's approach. She turned. Albina's hair was the first thing she noticed: white but streaked with gray. Sarah was not sure how that was possible, but it was. Albina's face was still handsome, but time had thickened her skin and created wrinkles along her forehead, eyes, and mouth. Her dark eyes were wary, judgmental, fierce. She studied Sarah's appearance.

"Yes," Albina said softly, "I admit I never expected you to go dark."

Sarah felt a moment of panic before she realized Albina was talking about her hair, no longer blonde, nothing more.

"Well, I confess I am not a fan of brunettes, but sometimes a new chapter in a girl's life requires a new look. I needed those who had seen me before to be able both to recognize me and recognize my...changes."

Albina continued to stare. After a moment, she gestured to the winding bench that ran along the edge of the overlook. A couple had gotten up and moved on, hands linked. Sarah sat down, squinting a bit in the long rays of the dying afternoon sun. Albina joined her.

"It is your...changes that interest me. That a woman such as you, with your training and history, might eventually decide to...shall we say, _cash out..._ before age dulls her skills - this is not unheard of, much less unimaginable. I should have done it, alas...But you, you always seemed to be loyal to Graham, or to the CIA. Until now, there had been no actual indication that you were tempted to...bite...the hand that fed you."

Sarah could feel that Albina's own history was somehow tied up with the comment, but she was not entirely sure how. She let it go. She needed to respond to Albina in the right way.

"My life has...changed. I found a man I love and who loves me - even knowing what I am, what I am capable of -, he still loves me." Sarah's voice broke, no pretending involved. Here, she was telling the truth. She glanced self-consciously at Albina, who was rapt in Sarah's words. The words spoke some truth of Albina's too, or once had. A distance, memorial, crept into Albina's eyes. _Volkoff._ Sarah decided to go on.

"But the man I love doesn't understand that I don't want him to be involved in this life, and he is. So, I've decided to _cash out_ before it stains him permanently. My hands are red; they have been red for years. I cannot be more damned than I am." _I love you, Chuck. I don't believe I am damned anymore. I was made for happiness, as you were; we will be happy together._ Sarah's eyes welled and she wiped at the corner of one with the outside of her wrist. Again, the tears were real.

Albina's eyes had darkened further. She seemed lost - in recollection, in feeling, _something_. "Women like us, Walker, there is no category for us. We are _sui generis._ We have the balls to take what we want, balls bigger than our mens', truth be told. It makes it hard for them…"

"Or," Sarah added, with a visible smirk, "not hard. We emasculate them, don't we?, threaten them. They want someone, softer, smaller...someone who is no...competition." _I'm sorry, Chuck, but I know now what she needs to hear._

Sarah watched Albina's eyes harden. _She is thinking about Volkoff and Frost. Bullseye._ "Yes, they want someone who will take...dictation...be dictated to. Not someone who is her own mistress, and who should be theirs." The black-ice look in Albina's eyes chilled Sarah; for a split second, she actually felt a pang of sympathy for Volkoff.

"Volkoff wants to meet you but he has a...healthy skepticism about your change of colors - and change of heart. This man who loves you, is he enough for you? You have lived a life, Sarah Walker, seen things most men have never seen, done things they have not done, not dared, even in dreams. You can give this life up to live...in quiet, to live hidden, with just one man for the rest of your life?"

 _Absolutely._ "Maybe. We will see. As you say, skills dull. Women who do what we do have short shelf lives, like American football players. I heard once that the players call the NFL 'Not For Long'. You and I, we play for our own NFL. One split second of slowing in our reflexes is the difference between life and death. And frankly, I would rather be on a sunny beach somewhere with a man between my legs than on the miserable tundra somewhere with a bullet between my eyes." Sarah stretched her lips into a thin smile, a calculating look in her eyes. She wanted Albina to think they were speaking telegraphese, assassin to assassin.

Albina responded, seeing herself in Sarah, hearing herself in Sarah's words. Albina then gazed across the overlook to the bench on the opposite side. A little boy was playing there. Albina extended her arm, making her hand into a gun, and pretended to shoot the little boy. The little boy gasped and put his hands on his chest, then slumped onto the bench, pretending to be dead.

Albina turned a ghastly, toothy smile on Sarah. "Little does he know, eh? How real that is for me, for you. How near death is to our thoughts..." Sarah forced herself to laugh, feeling like the sound was choking her, closing off her throat.

Laughing herself, deep and feral, Albina reached out and took Sarah's chin in her hands. "Yes, yes, you will do nicely. I hope you aren't too exclusive about the men between your legs, because Volkoff may decide to try that location for himself, once you have unchained him from... _her._ "

"Her?" Sarah asked flatly.

Albina let go of Sarah's chin. " _The Frost bitch_... The American. You are a younger version. As she once was. He must be tired of her by now. He...tires...of women. I do not know how she has managed her hold on him all these years...She must know some black erotic arts…"

Sarah had no interest in following that thought, so she tried to subtly change the topic. "How did she come to be part of Volkoff Industries?" Sarah knew the question was risky but she was curious and Albina was perhaps better placed to tell this story than anyone but the principals, if she would. Sitting there in the ending sunlight, Albina seemed disposed to talk. The thought of Sarah doing to Frost what Frost had done to Albina clearly cheered the older woman.

"She infiltrated Volkoff Industries. She claimed to have access to revolutionary technology, some kind of mind-enhancement device. For some reason, Alexei...um, Volkoff believed her. It was like she had him hypnotized or like..." Albina waved her hand, thinking, "what is the insane American actress (as if that picked out _one_ ), the one who said she had prior lives? The fake nun in the western…?" Sarah shrugged. She and Chuck had not gotten to westerns yet.

"Oh," Albina cried softly in triumph, " _Shirley MacLaine_...It was like that, like she had some hold on him from a former life. I never understood. It was like witchcraft….Black arts, as I said." Albina's face settled into an embittered smile. Sarah noticed that Albina's hand had unconsciously reformed as the gun she had used to shoot the little boy.

Albina finally looked at Sarah again and her hand lost its shape as a weapon. "I will advise Volkoff to hear you out. But keep in mind, my doing so neither guarantees he will see you nor that he will not kill you if he does."

"I understand," Sarah noted simply.

Albina stood up and glanced down at Sarah. "Do you think women like us are capable of love, or have we destroyed that capacity, doing what we do? The stories we tell ourselves to justify ourselves do not change the facts of hard record, the inhumanity of our lives - as you said, it does not rid us of the red on our hands. Who wants to hold a woman's blood-red hand?"

Albina did not stay for an answer. She turned sharply and melted into the crowd leaving the overlook as darkness began to fall.

Sarah let out a long, slow sigh. She had done it again, bent truth and lie together, become who she had to be to get the result she needed. Become who she had to be, not who she wanted to be. She longed to talk to Chuck so the longing felt like a toothache, sharp and deep and throbbing. But that was not going to happen.

Albina's question hung in the air around Sarah, in the red vestiges of the vanishing sunset, until Sarah got up and left herself.

Two days later, Sarah got an invitation to Volkoff Industries.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for Chapter 48, "Dark Engagements (Part Eight): Monster-in-Law?"


	48. Darkened Engagements (Eight)

**A/N1** Our heroine travels from Barcelona to Moscow and meets with Volkoff and Frost. A mission is assigned. A Gobbler, but not a turkey. Breakfast is served.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

 _Darkened Engagements (Part Eight)_ :

 _Monster-in-Law?_

* * *

When things are all you think of  
And plans are all you make  
And thoughts are all you dream of  
And falls are all you take  
Look out, the world's destroyin' ya  
Relax; it isn't fair  
Mother Nature's disposition  
She don't mind, she don't care  
She don't mind, she don't care  
And I wouldn't be a liar  
No, I wouldn't be a liar if I told you that  
I wouldn't be a liar

\- Built to Spill, _Liar_

* * *

Distance.

Distances.

Sarah had taken the high-speed train from Barcelona to Paris. She changed to a sleeper train that took her from Paris to Moscow. She had judged it better to travel by train, less risky. Once in Moscow, she made her way on to Volkoff Industries.

She had met Volkoff face to face. He was, of course, skeptical of her motives and unwilling to trust her. She had easily disarmed his three goons and then spared Volkoff's life - hoping to at least move him to give her a chance. He did.

Sarah knew that her 'chance' was, in reality, Volkoff's chance: he wanted to bend her to his will, to see how far she was willing to go in service of whatever motives she actually had. Her one consolation was that he did not seem to be looking for a replacement for Frost, as Albina had hoped. He seemed as complicatedly involved with her as he had from the beginning. Sarah was willing to do whatever it took to save Mary, but she did not want to become Mary in order to save Mary. That possibility had been tormenting Sarah from the moment she walked away from Chuck, and it had kept her tossing restlessly in her berth on the train to Moscow. That kind of betrayal of Chuck - and of herself - was not to be considered. She would kill herself before she submitted to that, whether it was Volkoff or some Volkoff-designated other.

When she explained herself to Volkoff, Sarah called Frost her'inspiration'. It was the right thing to say, but it captured Sarah's fear that she would end up in the very trap from which she had come to save Mary. She did not want to be inspired to recreate history, turning Chuck into his father.

Volkoff did not believe her. But he also did not disbelief her, not exactly. To an extent, the very unbelievability of what she was doing made it paradoxically more believable. Would she really put herself in Volkoff's hands in this way if she were not to be believed? Choosing to put herself in his hands was suicidal.

Volkoff chose to act as if he believed her: he wanted to find her lines and force her to color beyond them, forcing her to paint her hopes as black as she dyed her hair. She knew it. He knew that she knew it. She knew that he knew she knew it. And so on. The situation was desperate from the beginning.

In a bit of deadly and wry mockery, Volkoff decided - as a result of Frost's prodding - that Sarah's first mission for him would be to break Yuri the Gobbler out of jail. Volkoff called the mission 'a suicide mission'. Sarah called his deadly and wry mockery with a response of her own: "I love a good suicide mission". Volkoff agreed for himself. The subtext was clear. Proving herself was going to require staying alive.

Sarah had a hard time getting a sure read on Frost. She seemed to behave as Volkoff second in command. She did and said nothing to suggest otherwise.

She walked Sarah to her apartment in Volkoff's massive gray office building. But when they reached the door, she said nothing except that she was going to take her evening walk soon. Sarah recognized the signal. She went inside and quickly put her suitcase next to the bed. Rain, a drizzle so icy it was nearly falling ice, had been falling for a while.

Rain.

Distance.

Chuck.

* * *

She had done it again. Chosen to go it alone. It made a certain sense this time that it had not made in Thailand. There was no way she could have gotten Casey inside, no way Volkoff would have believed he was a traitor. To have brought Chuck would have been to have put him in Volkoff's power, the very thing Frost had been trying to prevent for two decades. Even if there had been time, Carina would not have worked as a partner. No, this was a mission she had to go alone. Maybe she should never have chosen the mission, but she wanted so much to reunite Chuck and Ellie with their mother, to give something back to the family that had given her so much. To redeem her past, at least in part, by using it to restore the Bartowskis _(that's going to be my name_ ).

But there was another reason she did not want Chuck along.

Although Chuck believed he had seen Agent Walker, interacted with her in the early days after Sarah came to Burbank, the truth was that Chuck had not seen Agent Walker, complete.

He saw Sarah after Budapest, after the baby, when changes were underway, when her servitude to the Graham was weakening, her greater self-awareness just beginning, but, still, _begun_. He had not seen Agent Walker, complete. He had not seen Agent Walker in Thailand, although perhaps Deng was right, and Agent Walker was not completely there, either. And maybe Agent Walker was not completely in Moscow - but she might have to be before it was all over, and Sarah did not want Chuck to see her. Sarah had changed her hair and her clothes in a bid to make becoming Agent Walker easier - but those changes would also make it easier for Chuck to see Agent Walker, and to realize that he had not seen her, not complete.

But if Chuck ever saw Agent Walker, complete, Sarah was unsure if he would ever be able to see her again, Sarah, again, without seeing Agent Walker superimposed upon her. That frightened her, deeply frightened her. It was the same fear that kept her from telling him much about her past, although she had managed to tell him some, more than she had told anyone else, reams more, as little as it was.

Sarah put on her jacket and headed outside into the compound that surrounded Volkoff's building. She wandered in the freezing cold, pondering the path of her feet. Luckily, the icy drizzle had relented. There were a few flakes of snow, but mostly there was just the flesh-freezing cold. Sarah had wandered for about a half hour when she saw Frost ahead of her, coming in the opposite direction. Frost told Sarah to stop.

Evidently, Sarah was standing on the one section of the compound missed by surveillance sweeps, a few square feet somehow uncovered and unexposed. Sarah explained quickly: she was there to bring Frost home and take Volkoff down. Sarah saw the pain and alarm in Frost's eyes, although Frost extinguished it quickly, leaving only concern. Frost told Sarah that being there, in the compound, subject to Volkoff's whims - that it could change Sarah, make her someone she no longer knew. Frost's gaze lingered for a second on Sarah's black hair, her black clothes, the point clear: staying could blacken Sarah, psychologically, spiritually. The unspoken message also clear: _as being here has blackened me, Sarah._

Sarah wanted to ask, to know - not just for her mission, but for herself. What had Frost done, been required to do? What might Sarah have to do? But Frost went on to explain about Yuri the Gobbler, about him being essential, somehow, to _Hydra_ , the codename for Volkoff's network. Frost walked away, leaving Sarah standing in the compound's dead spot. A chill unconnected with the frigid landscape ran up Sarah's spine.

So far, there was no reason to fear Albina's hope that Sarah would replace Volkoff as Frost had replaced her. That did not mean events could not spiral in that direction. But, for whatever reason, Volkoff showed no sign of being tired of Frost as Albina insinuated he had tired of her. Of course, Albina was also clearly a psychopath or a borderline case. Whatever was true of Frost - and there was no doubt she was a hard case, had been an agent comparable to Agent Walker - she was not a psychopath. Lonely, seemingly (despite Volkoff). Compromised, yes. Unhappy, certainly. But not crazy.

Sarah walked back to the main building, past the heavily armed guards posted by the door. She recognized them. They scowled at her menacingly. She was _persona non grata._ That was unlikely to change.

When she got back to her room, there was a note stuck to the door, a sticky note ( _bizarre_ ) from Volkoff, in his hand, signed ( _Alexei)_ informing her of the flight to the US in the morning. When she got inside, there was a set of files on the small desk. One was a file on Yuri, Volkoff's own, likely redacted. One was a file on the prison currently holding Yuri. A quick glance through the first made Sarah glad she had not eaten. In the photographs, Yuri had, and his victims were missing fingers and toes as a result.

 _The Cannibal, indeed. Frost has been living among these people for two decades. Dear God. Better to be alone, as I was. How did she get from her family, her boy and girl and husband, to this? What could have made her do it, to begin with? Why would she have taken the order, why didn't she quit? She loved her family, didn't she?_ _But I love Chuck - and Ellie and Devon and Casey and Morgan, and I'm here too. She stayed with Volkoff to protect her family. But why did she leave them?_

Sarah had no answer.

She looked at the second file, the one on the prison. It quickly became apparent that Volkoff's claim that it was a suicide mission had not been overdramatic. It was a job that would require more than one person - it would require several. Sarah chewed her lower lip. She did not want Chuck to see her like this, as Agent Walker, black. And she did not want to see him, although she was desperate to see him, for fear that her resolve, her hardening for the task at hand, would become brittle and shatter against her need for him. But she could not do this part of the mission alone, and Chuck, Casey and even Morgan were her team, the people she trusted when she was surrounded by people she could not trust. She decided she would find a way to get to Castle, to enlist their help.

ooOoo

Sarah found that she had inadequate covers for her bed. She spent the night freezing, her feet blocks of ice, seeking Chuck's feet for warmth. But Chuck was a million miles away. She dreamt, fitfully, of _Pressing and Grinding_ , of being in a Listening Room, the door locked, and of herself draped on Chuck in a state of serious undress. The rooms were soundproof, after all, and long-suffering i-Jodi had found herself a boyfriend of her own. _Good for her!_

But the dream passed and Sarah spent the next hour until it was time to get up shivering and staring at the ceiling, lost in desire for Chuck and out of contact with him. Before she arrived in Moscow, she made plans with Beckman to put various items in a locker in the airport; she had anticipated Volkoff putting her in the air, even if she had not anticipated that she would be going back to the US. Among the items was a secure phone. If Sarah was going to see Chuck face-to-face, then she could manage to talk to him by phone. Having it would be dangerous but she would run the risk.

As she shivered in the dark, Sarah recalled being in Moscow with Bryce. That episode seemed like it belonged in another life, to another woman. She had wanted something with Bryce. She had not gotten it, although she had not gotten nothing. She was now profoundly glad that Bryce had not turned out to be the trap for her he could have been. She would have remained nothing but a spy with him, as he would have remained nothing but a spy. It was all he wanted, all he knew how to want.

Bryce had been a speed bump; she had slowed down for him. But Chuck was her destination. She did not mean to think unkindly of the dead, and she was still pained by Bryce's death - his final, real one. But although she wished him alive, she certainly did not wish herself with him. She had made the right choice, refusing to go to Omaha. She had some vague, ill-defined sense at the time that her life itself was hanging in the balance of that decision; she could now acknowledge that it had been, and be thankful that she had chosen wisely, even if not open-eyedly, and even if she came close to reneging on that decision later. Shaw flitted into her mind and she felt a storm surge of self-revulsion and guilt, but it quickly passed. Chuck had forgiven her Shaw as she had Chuck Hannah. Those bad days were behind them. They were a committed couple. If she could stay alive, they would be an engaged couple. She just had to keep from darkening her engagement beyond recognition, painting it black.

ooOoo

She got up and dressed, grabbed her suitcase. There was a knock on the door. Sarah opened it to find Frost standing there.

"Good morning, Sarah. Ready for your flight?"

Sarah nodded in answer.

"I'm glad. It's an important mission. Alexei wants you to join us for breakfast." Frost turned and walked away, not checking to see if Sarah followed. She did.

Frost led her down the hallway and to the elevator. They got on and Frost punched the button for the penthouse - and underwent a retinal scan. Afterward, she turned and looked at Sarah but with no readable expression. The elevator dinged up the floor numbers, each flashing, until the doors opened on an opulent apartment. The first thing Sarah noticed was that it was warm, unlike her room. It was also huge, lush and lavish. Heavy carpeting. Handcrafted wood and leather furniture. Artwork adorned the walls. Not copies, originals by masters. But the apartment was a man's apartment, Alexei's. There was nothing in it that seemed Frost's. As Frost led her in, Sarah caught a glimpse of the cavernous bedroom. There were two beds in it. _Two?_

Sarah noticed that Frost had noticed her glance into the bedroom. Frost's expression was suddenly readable, legible: _do not react, say nothing._ Sarah iced her own features.

Alexei came striding into the room, grinning, swinging his arms wide and smacking his hands together in front of him, lord of all he surveyed, and sure of it. "Ah, Agent Walker - or should I say, ex-Agent Walker, now that you are a traitor, a rogue agent, a killer-for-hire that I have hired, dare I say, that I _own_?"

Sarah did not react. She kept her features frozen. Volkoff peered at her face curiously. "I see it now, what Charles must be drawn to. You and Frost, _the same_ , the same unreactive face, the same studied blankness. Charles found a girl just like dear old mom!"

Sarah flinched inwardly but kept her composure outwardly. Volkoff waited for a reaction; getting none, he sighed dramatically. "Come, come, let's eat. Breakfast: the most important meal of the day!"

Volkoff led them to a large dining room. The large table was set for three and covered in dishes, some still steaming: bacon, poached eggs, grilled tomatoes, fried bread, sausages, black pudding, and baked beans. Sarah was overwhelmed and slightly nauseated by it all. She could not remember seeing a spread like this since she was last in London.

Volkoff rubbed his hands together, his eyes shining. "All my favorites, to celebrate my newest dark soldier. Please, ex-Agent Walker, sit here." He pulled out a chair and Sarah sat down. Volkoff leaned across her and pulled the platter of sliced black pudding toward her. He picked up the silver fork and speared several pieces of it. "Ah, the perfect breakfast for the growing assassin. It matches your new color scheme - black. And of course, black pudding is a _blood_ sausage, part of an assassin's natural diet." Using his fingers, he pushed the sweating pieces of black pudding off the silver fork and onto the elaborate white china plate. Sarah's sick feeling increased. She had tried black pudding once and loathed it. More than olives. But she knew Volkoff was making a point, not really dictating what she ate. The point was that he could take these liberties, make these recommendations, and that she had to allow it.

"Thank you, Alexei. But some fruit and yogurt would agree with me more."

Volkoff picked up a small bell and shook it. Almost as soon as the pleasant tinkling sound ended, a beautiful woman in a chef's outfit came into the room. "Anastasia, yogurt, and fruit for our guest, please." The woman, tall as a supermodel but curvier, curtsied and left the dining room. Volkoff watched her go, staring at her swinging backside. He then looked toward Frost, and his expression became chastized. Frost's expression did not change during the entire episode.

Volkoff sat down and began to talk volubly about Yuri, his exploits. Tales of cannibalism over greasy blood sausage was not a formula for close attention. Sarah drifted in and out until Anastasia came with the yogurt and fresh-cut strawberries. Sarah ate a few bites and felt steadied. She pushed the black pudding away. Volkoff watched with a small smile on his face. "An assassin who cannot face blood sausage. The world is indeed a strange place." It was Volkoff's turn to be unreadable. He looked at Sarah for a long moment. He forked a few bites of poached egg into his mouth. He stood up and picked up a piece of bread, rolling it into a tube and taking into his mouth in two toothy bites.

He smiled, his mouth full. "Well, I have an evil network to run. You know how it is, busy, busy. Enjoy your trip to the States, ex-Agent Walker. And remember to keep your fingers and toes...nearby...when you are with the Gobbler. He will find you...tempting." Volkoff made a show of licking the fingers that had held the bread.

Alexei left. Frost put an egg on her plate and a tomato. She ate them wordlessly. After she finished, she looked at Sarah, who had eaten no more of her yogurt and strawberries. "Are you done?"

Sarah nodded.

"Then I will take you to Alexei's men. They will accompany you to the US and help you once you have freed Yuri. But they will not help with the escape. You will have to do that...alone."

Sarah nodded again.

"Good luck. We need the Gobbler. And Alexei is right. Guard your extremities." Frost remained wholly unreadable, at once half mother, half monster. She turned and led Sarah back to the elevator.

* * *

 **A/N2** Quite the breakfast club, eh? Chuck sees dark Sarah next time, and they meet the Gobbler, in Chapter 49, "Heart, Hearth, and Home". I am not sure but I believe I will not update this story again until I finish with Chutes and Ladders. That story is in the home stretch and I want to go ahead and finish it.

Z


	49. Darkened Engagements (Nine)

**A/N1** Where do we find ourselves?

By my reckoning, heading toward the end of the _Darkened Engagements_ story (two more chapters to go) Then, there is one more S4 story to come, a short one, _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ , a story that combines the CATs reunion and the wedding.

I am not actually going to write a S5 story as such. Not because there aren't things of interest in it, but because I am hoping to fold those things into the post-finale story or stories I will write. (I'm still undecided if there will be one long one or two short ones.)

That means we have the finish of _Engagements_ to go, and then _Bell_ and then the post-finale story or stories. So, we are not too, too far from the end of _MisEd_ , really.

Since I have finished _Chutes and Ladders_ , I intend to return to some longer comments in the A/Ns here (although not in this particular chapter). I still have some things to say about S3, S4, the finale, etc.

I appreciate those of you who have stuck with this long, sometimes dark and sometimes sad story. One source of _Chuck'_ s power was its interweaving sadness into its laughter, tragedy into its comedy. The show was gravid with something that comedy alone could not have given it.

I hope to continue hearing from you as we work toward the end of our story.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

 _Darkened Engagements (Part Nine)_

 _Heart, Hearth, Home_

* * *

The perfect place may never exist, may never exist  
The perfect time might be years and years away  
The city is overweight and it's pressing on the pair of us  
We scowl and sweat beneath the overbearing crush

But I still want to be here, want to be here  
I still want to be here, want to be here  
And I would live in a devil's ditch just to be near you  
I still want to be here, want to be here

\- Frightened Rabbit, _Still Want to be Here_

* * *

Still shaky from breakfast, from Volkoff's blood sausages and Frost's opacity, I gather my things and get in the car outside the building. It will take us - me and three of Volkoff's men, ones I have not seen before - to the airport.

I am heading home. The Gobbler's prison is in Oregon. I will be near Chuck, near my family (my family-to-be).

 _Can I see them - Chuck - and still do what I have to do? Can I bear them - Chuck - seeing me like this, so near now to what I once was, the woman I have kept hidden, secret for so long, my past self rendered present, past tense translated into present tense?_

 _Can I let my past walk into my future, let this darkened me be seen by the man I love and whose love is beyond value to me?_

I stomp the questions down and take a quick, unnoticed look at my three traveling companions.

I wonder what orders Volkoff has given them. Frost said they were coming to aid me once I had broken Yuri out of prison. But what are they supposed to be doing until then? I feel their eyes on me, like clammy hands. One of them is leering at me openly. _Bastard._ Perhaps he believes, has been encouraged to believe, something about me, or been told to do or given leave to do something to me?

What is Volkoff up to?

 _Wait._ No, Volkoff actually does want Yuri out of prison; I'm sure of that. When Frost told me that _we_ needed him, there was something stereo about her word: 'we' - Frost and me; 'we' - Frost and Volkoff. Volkoff wants the mission to succeed, but he wants it to test me, push me. Frost wants Yuri out of prison too.

I am not sure I can trust her, but I keep running up against Chuck, against his love for her, for his mother, up against his willingness to trust her. She's stepped into a blind spot for _me_ now, because I cannot help seeing the world as _he_ does, as hard as I keep trying to fight it while here, fighting to see the world as Agent Walker saw it, before the baby, before Burbank.

 _Agent Walker's world: gray liquid metal, forming and reforming globs of mercury, unstable, poison if contacted for long._

But I can't blind myself to Chuck's vision. The world keeps becoming solid, becomes dappled with fascinating objects, brightly colored, a place worth being, a place worth living. Seeing with Chuck's eyes lends even Russia a certain alienated majesty, a meaningful chill.

I need to stop thinking of Chuck. I need to be like Russia, the snowscape, as it looks to Agent Walker. Hard, cold, unfeeling. Icy. Ice Queen.

 _God, I am so tired of being cold. Trying to be cold. I have a warm bed in back in Burbank, and Chuck in it...undressed...waiting for me...undressed..._

 _Volkoff_. _Focus!_

No, Volkoff wants me tested. I know he does not believe me. But he also does not disbelieve me. He is hovering, in suspense, suspension, waiting for me to show him where to come down. The three men are here - I suddenly know this, _know it_ \- in case I run. Volkoff will hunt me down and kill me if I do; that is their job. But they are not going to stay too close to me. They will give me enough leash to tempt me to think I am free.

 _Volkoff, the bastard, employing Graham's old trick_. But a long leash is good. I just need to remember the leash. I can use its length: get to the phone in the airport, get to Chuck in Burbank. I am going to bring my team into this. I am not alone. I have friends. I have a man who wants to marry me, a man I want to marry. I am not alone.

 _Married_. Frost was married. What is Frost doing? What is the story? _Two_ beds? The shapely chef? I need Frost to talk to me. I need to talk to her.

ooOoo

At the airport, I get my chance to go to the locker, retrieve the phone. A mother stands near the lockers in which Beckman has had the phone secreted. The woman is looking down into a stroller, her baby crying. I walk over. None of my companions seems to want to get nearer a screaming infant. _Good._ I walk up and speak to the woman. She seems relieved that someone is willing to share her distress. I look down into the stroller at the little red-faced, unhappy baby girl. I reach carefully inside the stroller and stroke the little downy, damp cheek. The baby calms down. That _my_ touch could have that effect is such a surprise it almost makes me jerk my hand back. But then the touch calms me too.

 _A baby._

I look up The men are talking together, no one paying any _particular_ attention to me. I step past the mother and, keeping her and the stroller between the men and me, I bend over and I quickly spin the lock on the locker. It opens and I retrieve only the phone, slipping it into my jacket. As I do this, I stand and continue to chat with the mother.

I turn around. The men are still talking, still not really watching me, confident of themselves, their control over me. I squat down and coo at the baby. I want to pick her up, hold her. I recall my reunion. Standing outside the school, holding Gail's baby, baby Jenny. _I want to hold a baby._ My mind rushes backward to Budapest. Then forward. My mom. Mom. Mother. Motherhood.

 _A mother._

 _Someday..._

I refocus. I say goodbye to the mother, allow myself to let the little girl squeeze my finger as I say goodbye to her. I can still feel her small hand on mine as I board Volkoff's plane. _I can't let myself be distracted like this. Can't allow my emotions to come into play._

I am about to face several hours on a plane with three men, two pilots. I will not, cannot sleep. As much as I want to use the phone, just to send a text to Chuck, I know I cannot. I will have to be awake and undistracted. I cannot reveal the phone.

ooOoo

After takeoff, one of the men sits down in the seat beside me. Other than clipped orders, none has spoken to me. It is the man who leered at me in the car.

He stares at me, his eyes snaking up my body, feet, legs, hips, breasts. They linger there. Then on to my face. I look at him, willing myself absent from my own gaze. Cold. Absolutely cold. He is visibly affected, recoils a bit. Then he shrugs.

"Frost told us. She told us she would kill any of us who touched you. 'Butcher', not 'kill'. 'Butcher' was Frost's actual word. One thing you learn working for Volkoff. How do you Americans say it? 'Do not fuck with her.' We do not fuck with Frost. Volkoff is cruel, a sadist at times...But he is also changeable, fluctuating. Frost is like the Siberian winter. Implacable, frozen, always the same. Frost seems to think this mission crucially important. So you have nothing to fear, but I have something to look at."

His eyes drift to my breasts again. There's really not anything I can do about it, nothing that makes sense tactically or strategically. I will have to endure it. I turn to look out the window. I can feel his eyes still attached to my chest. I rotate in my seat, cross my arms. _Is Frost more concerned about me or about the mission?_ Whatever the answer, I am thankful to be under her protection and...impressed...by the fear she can create in such hardened men. I have had to do such things too, and I know how much energy it takes to create and maintain the conviction that can accomplish it. Or has it become real for Frost, that conviction? I ponder that, the difficulty of keeping long pretense from simply becoming reality, as the flight continues. I worry about Frost; I worry about me.

ooOoo

I am on my own but with precise instructions about my timetable. The leash gets longer here, I guess. I find a rental car waiting for me at the airport. I drive it to the edge of town then stow it in a short-term lot. I get a cab to take me to the Buy More Plaza. I need to get into Castle. But Beckman's plan required revoking my clearances, so I cannot just walk in.

I will have to break in. I have the cab drop me in the back and I quickly get into the air ducts of the building.

As I crawl toward the section of ducts that will lead me to Castle, I recall the last time I was in the guts, so to speak, of the building. That was the night of Heather Chandler. I figured some things out that night, things that I still haven't said to Chuck in so many words. I wonder if he understood what I meant that night, when it was all over, when I told him I needed to go _slow_ : I did not mean I had any doubt about the destination, or about whether I wanted it, I just needed time to acclimate, to face my old issues of not wanting what I want, of refusing to want what I want for fear it will be taken from me if I acknowledge that I want it. The strange game I play with myself, with the universe - _No But Yes_ (Brought to you by the CIA! On sale now!) I've been getting past it, stopped playing it, but putting on Agent Walker again has revived it, brought the game back, reinvigorated the old numbness between myself and my desires, my feelings.

 _Distance. Always distance_.

But, even in the ducts, this, Castle, feels...homey. Castle is where so much that matters to me has happened, some of it bad, but all of that now outweighed by the good. This is where I last saw Chuck, glanced at him as Beckman had me escorted out of Castle to begin this odyssey. I find the ducts that are protected and I manage to disarm them. I lower myself onto the landing of the stairs leading down into Castle. It is dark. Leaving the lights off, I begin to use the computer, and doing so brings up the lights.

I hear them behind me - the three of them, my Chuck, Casey, and Morgan. My team.

My heart has been racing since I lowered myself into Castle. Coming down the stairs, I was so glad to be here...I wanted to cry. But I squashed the emotion. Agent Walker, not Sarah. But when the lights go on, it is Sarah standing there in black. She, I, turn and give the guys a smile.

"Hello, boys." I am trying to cover my own reaction. I want to run to Chuck, to be in his arms, to kiss him, drag him to the floor…

My _hello_ might have carried a whiff of my immediate desire, I realize. Despite my hair not being blonde, there was a bit of Mae West in that greeting. All for Chuck. The greeting - and _me_.

But I am not here for _that_ , for _him,_ as hungry for him and as lonely for him as I am. Weeks of no contact. Weeks. I am weak. Weak. I go to Chuck. I cannot stop myself. But I do rein myself in. A quick hug.

Stepping back, I immediately launch into an explanation to keep myself from doing what I really want, answering my ache and the ache I see in his eyes as I pull back from the hug. _I love you so much._

I step away. Still, I can't help but say how good it is to see them.

I force myself to be about business, the mission for Volkoff. I tell them about Seabrook Super Max Prison, the place where the Gobbler is being held. I turn to look at Chuck, just happy to let my eyes feast on him, even while the rest of me starves.

But he is looking at me. And so, at her, in a way. At Agent Walker. Looking, thinking. Chuck's first glimpse of my past, the woman, the assassin, I once was. I am and I am not her. But I can't explain that now. Still, I see him grappling with the testimony of his own eyes. He knows and does not know me. For a second, I feel a tidal wave of seasick fear. What must he think, feel?

He tells me I look so different. Change, he sees the change. _Drastic._ That's his word. It must seem so. _I'm sorry, Chuck, I have done so little to prepare you for this, for the old me._ He keeps spiraling, trying to come to terms with what he sees, but also, I know, what he feels. My reorientation, my closeness to _her_ , to a me he does not know but knows he sees.

I turn from his gaze. I can't stand it.

He wants to believe the changes are cosmetic, skin deep, no more. He focuses on my hair color, how I changed it. Cosmetic. He wants to believe the changes are merely cosmetic. But he is Chuck - and he will find his way to the answer. He will figure this out. And then it will not just be that I am in Russia, but that I may no longer be his Sarah; I may have changed, become someone else.

 _Distance. So much distance - not just physical, metaphysical. Always distance._

Casey catches my eye. Casey knows. Of course, he does. He understands what I am doing. Who I have been. What I am risking. He knows Chuck does not understand. Not yet. _Don't tell him, Casey. Don't make him more miserable._

We talk Yuri and the breakout. I can feel Chuck listening, contributing. But he is struggling. Long ago I told Ellie that Chuck was like a duck. Things seemed fine on the surface but underneath he was paddling away. He is paddling away now, trying to tread water, to keep from going under. He feels the distance between us.

I explain more about what I am doing. I make it clear that Frost and I are in contact. I tell them about Yuri's connection to Hydra. I know Chuck is working it out. I need to be gone before he does. I will not be able to bear it if he looks at me and sees her.

My watch beeps. Volkoff's men will be expecting me. I tell them I will meet them at the prison. I can't stop myself from kissing Chuck, but I keep it chaste, quick.

I turn to walk away, forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other, my pace hurried. I can't be her and kiss him. I won't let her kiss him, not really kiss him. Even if I am only partly her, she has no business, none, with Chuck's lips.

ooOoo

I am walking out of Castle when Chuck follows.

He calls my name. _Sarah_.

He calls for me, not her. And I turn, Sarah does, and now I do not fight it. I let the gravity that has always been between us pull me to him and I kiss him like I mean it. _I do. I do. I so do._ He kisses me back, matching my intensity. We are, for a moment, Chuck and Sarah. Just _us._ And for the first time since I left him, I feel warm all over. I _am_ still Sarah; I am not the Ice Queen.

I was chilled, not frozen.

 _I am Sarah. I am going to marry this man. For now, the distance closed. Close. So close._

ooOoo

I tell him that I have missed him too. I still don't let on how much.

I am not Agent Walker.

But I am wearing her, like a mask. I do not think I can be her again, despite my fears. The relief, for me, is deep and wonderful. Maybe that kiss will also help Chuck work it out. Understand what I am and am not, who I am and am not. Know that I do love him. He spirals again. _Cheating on me with me?_ Right, he can sense the mask, the pretense, but he will understand them for what they are, I hope. Eventually. Agent Walker is cosmetic, _more or less_. Not just a hair color, but not me. She is my past; she is my present cover.

I am so glad he called me back, called my name, called me Sarah. Home. Chuck is my heart, my hearth, and my home.

 _He is where I belong -_ despite the wayward English.

I tell him to call me on the secure phone. (Beckman will give him the number.)

I am Sarah.

I will figure this out. I will find a way for Chuck and my team to help me. I am not alone, a loner. I will figure out how to take Volkoff down, and I will figure out what is happening with Frost. I will.

I leave Chuck and Castle feeling renewed energy, determination. I will return to Burbank with Frost.

But first I have to help a cannibal escape from prison.

 _Of course._

* * *

 **A/N2** Easing myself back in after several chapters of _Chutes and Ladders_. More soon. Tune in next time for Chapter 50, "Spy in the House of Love?"

Z


	50. Darkened Engagements (Ten)

**A/N1** Difficult chapter to write. I've stayed in the first-person POV for obvious reasons.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FIFTY

 _Darkened Engagements (Part Ten):_

 _Spy in the House of Love?_

* * *

I've waited too long to have you  
Hide in the back of me  
I've cheated so long I wonder  
How you keep track of me

You could never be strong  
You can only be free  
And I never asked for the truth  
But you owe that to me

I entered the game of pricks  
With knives in the back of me  
Can't call you or on you no more  
When they're attacking me

I'll climb up on the house  
Weep to water the trees  
And when you come calling me down  
I'll put on my disease

You could never be strong  
You can only be free  
And I never asked for the truth  
But you owe that to me

\- Guided By Voices, _Game of Pricks_

* * *

With Chuck, Morgan and Casey helping, I succeed in freeing the Gobbler.

I have to take him almost immediately to Volkoff's men, and then we have to get to the plane. They have worked out our exit, so that is not my problem. In a handful of hours, Yuri will be reunited with Volkoff. I doubt there will be tears, weepy eyes. Still, maybe Volkoff will begin to believe, relax toward me, and maybe I can find a moment with Frost, somehow.

The goodbye with Chuck is awkward. I cannot let myself be pulled to him again. I will never leave if I do. But the mission is unfinished. Chuck's mom is still with Volkoff. I wish I fully understood that 'with'.

After a clumsy goodbye kiss, made clumsy by my not getting out of the escape truck to say goodbye (although Chuck, as usual, blames himself), I drive the unconscious Yuri to the appointed place, Volkoff's men.

Soon, we are on board the plane to Russia.

No one sits near the Gobbler, I notice. Even the leering man gives up his vantage point on me to sit in the back, away from Yuri. I sit behind the Gobbler, and, thinking of Frost's warning, I tuck my feet under me and my hands under my arms. I do not sleep, but I cat nap, one eye open, dreaming of the kiss with Chuck in Castle. His lips, the sweet taste of him. _He always tastes so damn good._

 _I hope I tasted good too. I want to taste good too._

I can still taste Chuck on my lips when we land - although it is perhaps my imagination. I want to be back in Burbank so bad that I feel hollow, as if someone had scooped my heart out of me, leaving only a moving shell. I wince a bit at my own imagery, a vague feeling of foreboding.

I escort Yuri from the car; the three men go with it. Frost stands outside, waiting for me. Relief and pleasure ghost across her face and then it goes stony. I am not sure what the reaction means.

Two men join us as we go inside, and they take Yuri with them so that he can get cleaned up and become presentable.

Frost gives me an amused, slushy smirk: "Alexei has a bit of a dress code. Orange is not the new black, not in Russia, anyway."

She walks on. I stand, unsure. Frost looks over her shoulder. "Sarah, follow me. We will be expected to present Yuri to Volkoff - or, you will, but I am expected to be there too - we don't have much time."

I take a couple of long, fast steps and fall into stride with her. We take the elevator but stop one floor below the penthouse floor. Frost, softly: "I am taking you to my private quarters. I will tell Alexei, if he asks, that you needed to freshen up. Your room, oddly enough" - icy smile - "was on the docket for some repairs today."

Frost keys open the door and we step inside. The room immediately reminds me of Burbank, of Ellie's. The taste expressed is the same. The room is deeply at odds with the penthouse, with the building, with Russia. It makes me relax a bit; I smile.

Frost smiles too, this time her smile is not icy. But there is something in her eyes, anger, panic.

"This room is not bugged. I demanded it and I sweep it daily." I nod, acknowledging what she has told me.

Frost takes a breath, then begins. She struggles to produce the words. "Sarah, you should not be here. I appreciate what you are trying to do. I am...touched. You must love my son very much." Her quick, tight smile is equally a grimace. "But you are trying to...save...someone...beyond salvage. You must be able to tell, you must _know_ : I am...compromised. I have been compromised for a long, long time."

She waves one hand, the gesture so fraught it seems almost involuntary. "There's a story; I had...have...my reasons. But the story does not change...the bottom line. Volkoff is...in love with me. I have had to...make him believe I am in love with him. Make him _believe_ it, Sarah. _Make believe I am in love with him_."

Frost's normal complete control is now gone. I see Ellie not just in the apartment now, but in Frost's animated face too, and it makes all this... _worse_ , much worse. I cross to Frost and take her hand in mine.

"Mary, it's…"

She pulls her hand back at my touch. " _No_ , Sarah, it's... _not_. I am not _Volkoff's_ wife. I am not even his mistress...or, not exactly. Volkoff wants me but he...has _trouble_ acting on that desire...I remind him of someone.

"So, we are a couple, but not a normal couple; I am his second-in-command, but I am not sleeping _with_ him, although I do sleep with him. But in a second bed. I don't mean to try to excuse myself, though, or to suggest we have never... _touched_...each other…." Mary swallows, looks nauseated. I hear her whisper Stephen's name, barely audible.

I try to understand this. What does Frost mean? 'Trouble'? Although there is something pleasingly ironic about the idea of the world's largest and most notorious weapons dealer being unable to... _weaponize_ , the exchange of looks between Frost and Volkoff after Volkoff stared wolfishly at the chef's bottom makes me think that weaponizing, at least in general, is not the problem. But Frost seems unwilling to explain further - the sleeping arrangements, anyway. _What does she mean, she_ reminds _him of someone?_

"I have been at his side for years, trying to steady him, rein him in. I have prevented deaths and...atrocities, but to do so I have had to stand by him, stand by and consent to - _watch,_ if nothing else - other horrible things. Your freeing of Yuri may get you into Volkoff's good graces; it is hard to predict his reactions. But he will not rest until he has _changed_ you, Sarah. If he ever lets you go back to Chuck, it won't be until Chuck doesn't want you back…"

I can feel Frost's own sorrow now, feel her inability to separate my plight and hers. She wanted, _no, she wants_ to go back, not to Stephen (dear God, it is too late for that, she knows) but to her family, her children. She does not think they will want her, not if they know, if they truly understand what she has become, what she has done.

We mirror each other, Frost and I. Standing there. Frost and the Ice Queen - both our hearts too long in cryogenic suspension.

I can see her plight as mine, as part of what kept me from Chuck for so long, and as part of the explanation for why I was so afraid of him seeing Agent Walker. I had a fear like hers when Chuck saw me in Castle. I have not completely outrun the fear now. I hear its footsteps behind me.

"Mary," I try again, "my file is thicker than yours, bloodier, but your son...he loves me." Mary nods but then she turns sharp eyes on me, a cool, assessing stare.

"You've told him - _all of it_ \- and he still loves you. The terminations, the details." I can't tell if she is stating disbelief or asking me a question.

It is my turn to ice over.

 _What do I say?_

I have told Chuck a few things. Mostly as generalities, not specifics. He has seen things. Mauser. He has flashed on a few past missions. I have shared my treasures but not my horrors.

I make myself be expressive, defrost. I meet Frost's icicle glare. I speak for her - and for me. Words tumble out of me, surprising us both.

"No, not all of it. Not specifics. Chuck knows in general terms. He flashed on...some...missions early in my time in Burbank. He saw me...execute a man.

"But, no, not all of it. Still, Mary, he has seen that. He has seen a lot in the past four years. He has shot a man. Chuck _is_ a spy. Not like you are, not like I am... _used to be_ , but a spy. He will forgive you; he has already forgiven you. Forgiven that you and Volkoff are…" I search for an appropriate word, "... _involved_. Chuck is noble and high-minded, but Mary, he is not _naive._ He suspects. He worries. Ellie's not naive, either…" I reach out to Mary again. She lets me take her hand, hold it. I see tears in her eyes now, ice melting. One lone tear trails down her cheek.

"I don't know. I can't go back for as long as Volkoff is...in business. I _can't._ Maybe the kids can find their way...past...my past. But I can't face them until I finish the mission I came here to do, until he can no longer hurt anyone." She pauses, looks at me then away from me. "Until no one can hurt him. The mission is all I have. All I have left."

I still do not understand what Frost is telling me, not completely. She looks back at me. "Be careful, Sarah. Volkoff will try to corner you. He will give you no choice but the choice he wants you to make. I don't know when...I don't know how...I don't know where...But I do who. I know _him_. A reckoning is coming. I hope you fare better...than I did. I hope your corner is less...complicated."

I nod. My stomach is knotted confusion, sorrow, and fear.

Frost stands straighter. She wipes her eyes. In a moment, she is the woman who threatened to butcher my traveling companions if they touched me. She hardens. I do the same. We mirror each other. She leads me from her apartment, back to the elevator, down to Volkoff's office, to Volkoff.

ooOoo

Yuri is waiting for us when we get off the elevator. Frost gives him a curt nod and then leads us past Volkoff's executive assistant and into Volkoff's office. He gives me an indecipherable look then smiles at Yuri. Frost and I step to the side, so as not to interfere with Yuri's homecoming.

Volkoff greets Yuri heartily but then begins to segue into a chiding tone, reminding Yuri of his importance and of the serious error he made in allowing himself to be captured and jailed. The Gobbler, a mountain of a man, shrinks visibly beneath Volkoff's tone.

Just when I fear something...bad...is about to happen, Volkoff declares that he is not angry with Yuri. Just disappointed. The mounting tension in the room reverses. Yuri visibly relaxes, stands taller.

Volkoff whirls and shots Yuri in the head.

Frost and I both react, wince. Neither of us expected that. Volkoff seems unaffected, except perhaps a trace of satisfaction. I knew I was in danger here. Frost has tried to make it clear. I am now fully aware. Volkoff's wishes are the reality here.

He climbs aboard Yuri's corpse, digging at Yuri's head. Liquid, sucking sounds, jello through a straw, fill the room. And then Volkoff, triumphant, brandishes Yuri's eye.

No, yes, no. It is...It was Yuri's eye. But it is glass. Not his natural eye. Volkoff circles to his desk, inserts the eye into a receptor, punches buttons. Hydra is then displayed before us, in its remarkable complexity. I realize that Yuri did not so much know about Hydra as he was a functioning piece of it. Not functioning now. I can smell the blood pooling behind us, around Yuri's ventilated forehead.

Volkoff explains that Hydra works because its pieces do not know each other, do not know they are part of a network. He punches more buttons, gloating, full of himself, Hydra. He then confesses that his use of Yuri was a mistake, the existence of the eye a mistake. He smashes it. For a moment, both Frost and I believe he has destroyed Hydra. But no, he has moved it to a secure location.

A piece of the shattered eye lands near Frost's foot, the data-bearing inwards of the eye. She covers it with her foot.

Volkoff looks at us - at me - and announces we have another mission. The jet is waiting. Frost looks at me, subtle warning in her glance, her face hidden from Volkoff. I am to be back on a plane, this time with Volkoff and Frost. Frost retrieves the piece of the eye and slips it into her pocket.

I can feel it now, the corner. Feel myself being forced. Feel myself on a shortened leash. The last of the warmth I felt in Chuck's arms drains from me. Unbidden, I remember the day at the Farm, the day of my make-over. The woman's advice about walking in high heels. _One line._

I am walking a line now. I fear where it leads. All I can see is that it leads into the dark.

ooOoo

We are in Burbank.

That chills me. It can be neither an accident nor a coincidence. Frost warned me. But why now? Why so immediately? I brought Volkoff Yuri. But that seems to have earned me nothing from Volkoff.

A car takes us from the airport to a highrise building in the city, one under reconstruction, deserted. There are men there when we arrive and men who arrive as we do. Something is afoot, something has been...prepared. I shiver. Dread. I feel the corner, feel myself being backed into it.

We get out. Volkoff turns to me. He finally plays the ace he has been holding. He holds out a small electronic screen and asks whether the man whose face is displayed aided me in freeing the Gobbler. The man is Casey. The image is of the fake ID Casey displayed when he posed as a prison guard.

I explain. The man is loyal to me, so I used him. Volkoff gives me a vulpine grin, congratulating me on my answer. Again, I do not think he believes me. I do not think he does not believe me. He has something else on his mind.

With a flourish, much like that with which he brandished Yuri's eye, he tells me that I am here to kill Casey. For a moment, I feel faint. It is all I can do to keep myself upright, not to give myself away in my reaction. Frost is very still for a second.

So this is my corner.

I have to kill my friend in order to get into Volkoff's good graces, to give myself the best chance to save Frost. I can't kill Casey. That is off the table, unthinkable. But if I do not, Volkoff will, or his men will. Casey is in the building. He does not realize that he is trapped.

Volkoff hands me a gun. Not my shiny S&W, but a dark gun, one of his. I take it, moving on automatic pilot. My mind is racing, my heart is pounding. I walk forward into the building, backing further into my corner.

I climb the steps, trying to slow the progress of this nightmare. What can I do? I have to find some way to let Casey know I am here. I need to eliminate the possibility of simply executing him. I climb, but I have no definite plan. I want to retch, to heave the gun, to bolt from the building. I want to find Chuck and hide in his arms. I want...

My feet are so cold I cannot feel the steps I take.

 _One line. A thin, red line leading me upstairs._

I force myself to breathe, force the rising bile down - but it wants to climb as I climb. My throat is burning. My eyes are watering. The gun gets heavier with each step.

I reach the door I have been climbing toward.

So this is where I find myself at last. After all that has happened. My recruitment, my training, my years as Enforcer. The CATs. Bryce. Budapest. The baby. Burbank. Chuck. Three years of miserable waiting and wanting. Hope and disappointment. Emptiness - and then love. Almost engaged. Almost. Almost married. Almost.

And here I am, dressed in black, my hair black, a black gun in my hand, being forced into a black deed.

Did I labor for so long toward the light only to be swallowed by the dark? Was this always my fate, to be shown the Promised Land but to be exiled from it because of what I have been, what I have done?

I open the door since I have no answers and since Volkoff will not wait forever. I start the walk toward Casey, knowing I am on Volkoff's screen. _One line, Agent Walker._ I stop next to a pillar. I am reflected in the glass wall Casey stands before, looking out. I hope he sees me. I notice paint cans on the floor. I start toward him, making sure I jostle one with my foot, alerting him to my presence. He turns and I allow him to knock the gun from my hand. I need to talk to him; I can get close enough as we fight hand-to-hand.

Punch. I explain what is happening. Spin, block, kick. Casey understands the fix we are in, that Volkoff is watching. Casey suggests I shoot him in the shoulder. Punch, block, block. I tell him I am not going to shoot him. We continue to fight. He shoves me hard against the glass, pointing out a movable construction platform, a boom, below, a larger version of the boom window cleaners use. He tells me to throw him through the window. He can survive the fall to the platform; he's survived such falls before.

I do not want to do it. Too risky. Unsure of what to do, I do the one thing I can. I slip the inwards of Yuri's eye into Casey's pocket. I tell him to give it to Chuck. (Frost moved it to me, unnoticed, on the plane.) Casey's eyes show that he understands me.

Volkoff arrives. My heart sinks. And then I see Chuck. Chuck is with him. Chuck. I liquefy completely. All that I have feared is here, now. The reckoning.

I hit Casey hard. He goes down, genuinely dazed.

No. No, no, no, no. Anything but this, anything but this in front of Chuck. Volkoff is leering. Not at me, but at the situation, the pain he anticipates for Chuck. Frost: _If he ever lets you go back to Chuck, it won't be until Chuck doesn't want you back…_

Chuck's eyes sweep the scene. He looks at me with disbelief, horror. She is coming into hard focus for him now, Agent Walker is. Not a mask. Me. Volkoff picks up the gun Casey knocked from my hand and offers to kill Casey.

I tell Volkoff not to do it. I will do it. I will 'kill' Casey so that Volkoff does not kill Casey. But Chuck will see me kill Casey. This is so much worse than Mauser for so many reasons. Chuck pleads for me to stop, not to do it, his whole body, his whole being, begs me to stop. Watching me 'kill' Casey will kill a part of Chuck. It will damage, maybe destroy his love for me. I have to hope that Casey's living through my 'killing' him, and my delivering the Hydra information, will control the damage, but I can't know that. It was bad enough for Chuck to see me looking like an assassin. But for Chuck to see me assassinate, assassinate Casey, to do it at Volkoff's bidding, knowing that Volkoff intends Chuck to be a victim as well as Casey...

 _Prick!_ _Damn him! Damn his games._

I have to act. I stand Casey up. I pull back my fist. I hear Chuck. I feel my heart shatter. I punch Casey as hard as I possibly can, and he is alert enough to aid me, throw his weight backward harder than my punch alone could have done. He times it perfectly. The glass shatters before the pieces of my heart rain onto the floor.

Casey falls. Terrified, I step to the edge, my foot crunching glass. I look down.

I take a breath, release it. Casey is on the boom. He will survive. I am about to turn and face Chuck and Volkoff, when I see the anchor of the boom give way, spilling Casey into the night air, and I watch him fall to the ground.

I cannot breathe. I meant to 'kill' him, but I killed him. In front of Chuck, I killed Casey. _Enforcer, enforce!_ I rotate away from the window, and axle of a rapidly spinning nightmare. Casey, below and behind me, dead. Chuck, across from me, his eyes empty of his heart, filled with terror...of me...horror...of what I have done...knowledge...of what I really am. I am finally living my corpse dream; I am not asleep. This is an eyes-open nightmare; I am an undead thing. I do not exist, I subsist but above ground. A dream made rotten flesh.

Volkoff delivers the _coup de grace_ before he knocks Chuck out with a savage blow.

"And she did it all for you!"

 _Bastard._

 _T_ _o kill Casey, to make me kill Casey, and then to make Chuck believe it is all his fault. My love, what have I done?_

I kneel beside Chuck, checking him. He is alive but unconscious. Volkoff, mission done, is eager to go. I cannot stay. I cannot fight. Any resistance now will result in Volkoff killing Chuck. Frost watches, her skin perhaps paler than usual.

 _If he ever lets you go back to Chuck, it won't be until Chuck doesn't want you back…_

I trail behind Volkoff, reversing my course from earlier. _One line. A thin, red line. I know where it leads. Hell. The other corpses are dancing,_ danse macabre _, dancing to welcome me home._

ooOoo

I sit on the plane. Frost is beside me. I keep trying to wipe my hands, to find some way to wash the blood from them. The blood I saw on Casey's broken body, the blood I chilled in Chuck's broken heart. Wipe, wipe, one hand, then the other. Frost takes my hand, a mirror image of my taking hers in her apartment. Her eyes are full of pain, reflecting my own back to me. I cannot live with this. I cannot live like this. In a frozen Hell, Volkoff the Lord of Flies, presiding over a legion of corpses.

Frost. "It gets easier."

I am unsure of the referent of 'it'. I don't know if I want to know. "How?"

"Distance."

 _Distance. Always distance. It will never close again._

Volkoff comes to us from the front of the plane. Frost takes her hand away before he can see.

My phone, the secure one, vibrates. Volkoff and Frost have moved away. I carefully remove the phone from my pocket, look at the screen. _Chuck._

How can I explain? I killed Casey. I did not intend to kill him but I did. I cannot explain this in a text. I cannot bear to read an accusation from Chuck, and I know that is what he has sent. I saw the look on his face before Volkoff hit him. He looked at me and saw her. _Only her_.

My past self has claimed my future. My future is Agent Walker. Not Sarah Bartowski. Not Chuck.

 _Not Chuck._

I refuse the message. I am so inundated by pain and sorrow, so drowned by it, that I can neither plant my foot on the bottom nor swim up to the top. I cannot do anything, cannot think at all, much less coherently. I can only drown.

I turn to the window, staring out into the dark sky as it swallows the plane, swallows me.

Goodbye, Sarah. Goodbye, Chuck.

 _Distance._

* * *

 **A/N2** Our poor heroine. Hang in there. Things will get better. This is one of the darkest moments of the show from Sarah's POV. More next time, including an important non-canon conversation between Chuck and Sarah. Tune in for Chapter 51, "Darkened Engagements (Part Eleven): Full Circle".

I am a big Miike Snow fan (I used their lyrics in _Omaha._ ) Their song, _Silvia_ , is one of the truly brilliant song placements in the show (and that's saying something). Check out the lyrics. Heartbreaking (especially in context as the episode ends).

Why the show went to such lengths to parallel Sarah and Frost and then did so little with the parallel is truly perplexing. The Gobbler episode should have focused on Sarah and Frost. We did not need as much of Chuck and Casey and Morgan playing _Risk_ , for example. But the show just could not let itself follow its own best impulses so often, and so Sarah and Frost get virtually no screen time except when sharing the screen with Chuck.

I give them some time here. I know the stuff between Frost and Volkoff is odd. Some of you have probably figured it out. It will not be explained until later. But the idea that Frost kept Volkoff waiting for twenty years, well...

Thoughts?


	51. Darkened Engagements (Eleven)

**A/N1** The transition from Gobbler to Push Mix is one of the most bizarre in the show. We go from Sarah lost in despair, believing she has killed Casey and cost herself her future, to Sarah seemingly okay, working composedly with Frost to find the location of Hydra.

When Beckman shows on a Castle big screen and tells Chuck that she has talked to Sarah and that Sarah will be in the field a while longer, the obvious inference is that Sarah has been told that Casey is okay and has, presumably, re-established contact with Chuck. So…

The entire Volkoff infiltration is a case of the show chickening out, deciding to tell a dark tale, but only sub-vocally, as it were, never quite stating it aloud, leaving it to the reader to suss it out, work it out. I suspect that it was not just the darkness of the tale that kept it sub-vocal, but also the brute unbelievability of it. Anyway…

More than one kind of chapter-break in what follows. This chapter is much more episodic than the last several. We here end this long Darkened Engagements story.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

 _Darkened Engagements (Part Eleven)_ :

 _Full Circle_

* * *

These are they who devote their whole lives to each other, with a vain and inexpressible longing to obtain from each other something they know not what; for it is not merely the sensual delights of their intercourse for the sake of which they dedicate themselves to each other with such serious affection; but the soul of each manifestly thirsts for, from the other, something which there are no words to describe, and divines that which it seeks, and traces obscurely the footsteps of its obscure desire.

\- Plato, _The Symposium (Shelley Translation)_

* * *

I am in Volkoff's car, along with Frost and Volkoff and a driver. We are the first car in a string of cars - henchmen and lackeys, luggage and equipment.

The last few days have been an odyssey within my odyssey. I stare out the window as the road winds down to the sea, my mind adrift.

* * *

After returning us to Moscow, Volkoff jetted off again on business he would not describe. Frost accompanied me to my room and stood beside me as I opened the door. She put her hand on my shoulder.

"I will be in my quarters if you need...anything. Need to talk." I could tell she wanted to do more but was unsure what would help. I had no suggestion.

I nodded while staring into my dark room. She turned to leave. I wanted to thank her but my throat would not open.

I went inside and I fell into bed as if it were a grave.

The room was frigid, so cold I was surprised not to find frost on the blankets. If the lights had been on, I would have seen my breath, proof that I was alive, dead though I felt.

As it was, I subsisted in the dark for a moment until I passed out or went to sleep, mortified exhaustion a gaping maw that consumed consciousness.

I woke to vibrations. The secure phone, still in my pocket. I fish it out, unwedging it from my pocket. I am still prone on the cold bed.

Chuck. Chuck again. And again. He has kept trying but I must have slept through several attempts. My eyes filled with tears. My hands were so numb from the cold of the room that I could only stab at the phone with my frozen finger, unable to feel the contact, only to see it.

Distance. Distance was fine; maybe it was the answer for Frost. It was for a long time my answer.

No more. I was not going to lose Chuck to keep from losing him. That - that _certainly_ \- was a losing strategy, a doomed turn of _No But Yes._ If I had lost him, I would face it and face the searing pain of it. Besides, my life, Frost's life, they were both proofs that distance did not solve problems, it just kept you from confronting the consequences of failing to solve them. It kept you from witnessing your children's lonely, motherless misery. _I think of Chuck and Ellie and their 'Mother's Day'._ Or, it would keep me from acknowledging my broken heart, the wreckage I would have to live with if Chuck didn't want me back.

 _I love Chuck_. I didn't know what he then thought of me and I feared to find out as I could not remember fearing anything before.

But I could, I _would not_ just close myself off. That was Agent Walker's way; it took me forever to unlearn it. I was not going to staunch the new life that was in me. No matter what Chuck believed he saw, I was no longer a killer, even if I killed Casey.

I was numb from the cold; I was not numb.

I was not dead, not a corpse. _Obviously._

I saw Chuck's messages, displayed from most recent to least recent. I did not read the most recent, I scrolled quickly to the first, the one he must have tried to send me while I was on the plane, the one I refused.

 **I love you, Sarah. I trust you**

I blinked at the message in disbelief, shock.

I shook my head, certain I was dreaming. But, no. The message abided. It was still there, Chuck's first communication with me after what happened with Casey. Those words in that order, those precious words.

I felt warmed, heart-warmed. But all over.

I had done it again. Taken the limits of my imagination as if they determined the limits of Chuck's. There were many things I was better at than Chuck, he and I both knew this. But not that, not at imagining how it is with other people. I was making progress, but I still had a long way to go. We taught each other; he taught me then, with his text. I read the second.

 **Casey still alive. At the hospital. Doctors cautiously optimistic**

I scrolled to the third message.

 **I'm okay. Tell me you are okay. I know what you must believe, and it is killing me, imagining that you believe you killed Casey**

The fourth.

 **Casey, stable. Me? Unstable, going crazy. Please, Sarah, are you okay?**

The fifth.

 **Casey is going to make it! Bed rest, but full recovery possible. He's as tough as he thinks**

 **Told me you gave him the Hydra info. Please respond, Sarah. Please. I'm going crazy**

Thrilled, joyous, so relieved I was weeping, I typed a text and sent it.

 **Thank God! I love you, Chuck**

 **I'm okay. Home soon, I promise, with your mom**

I rolled over, hugged my phone to my chest, pedaled my legs in the air like a little kid. I giggled and kept giggling. I was giddy with relief about Casey, about Chuck.

Casey, alive!

And Chuck, Chuck held onto Sarah when I was ready to let her go. _I love that man so much!_ He kept faith in me when I lost faith in myself. He kept me close to himself; he kept me close to me.

I was warm against the cold.

I reached over and turned on the lamp. I was in the light again.

* * *

Volkoff was still on his trip. I found Frost, and after we were back in her quarters, I shared the news. She brightened, grabbed and hugged me. She pulled back, smiled at me, then grabbed and hugged me again.

"Sarah, I'm so glad, so relieved! The thought that you might be stranded here too, here without Chuck, him there without you...It was too much to bear." I read her Chuck's texts and her eyes filmed over, pride and shame causing the tears. "That's my Chuck,"-sudden, self-conscious pause-"What a job my daughter did, raising my son." We stand silent for a moment, both overcome by emotions difficult to combine.

Frost's face begins to harden again as her gaze grows calculative. "Volkoff is still gone. We need to take the chance and see if we can find out where the secure server with Hydra on it is. If we behead Hydra, we behead Volkoff Industries…"

We began to make a plan. We executed it and found that Volkoff sent Hydra to someone called 'The Contessa'.

* * *

But The Contessa is not a someone, it is _a something_ , a ship. That is where Volkoff has taken us. Where Hydra is not secured. We get out of the car and, after enduring a commercial for the ship from Volkoff ( _ice cream?_ ), Frost turns to me, tells me that we have to find Hydra, get away. This is our chance.

* * *

That night Frost tells me that I am getting off the ship, getting away, whether we find Hydra or not. She is not going to let me become her or let Chuck become Stephen. I know the parallel is there, of course, but until she says it I don't think I had quite thought of Chuck as occupying Stephen's place, even though I recognize that I occupy Frost's.

I should never have done this alone.

My desire to protect Chuck physically, always so strong, has led me to risk harming him in other ways, perhaps almost as permanent, certainly as painful or more. I worry so much about him that I forget he worries as much about me. I keep forgetting that we are _one, truly together._ If I am at risk, he is at risk. It is hard for me to remember that he loves me; I went so long with no one around who did. It is not that I forget it, exactly, it is that I become so involved in loving him, in the miracle of him, that I forget he is equally involved in loving me, that I am his miracle.

Almost as if I conjured him by thinking of him, I hear Chuck say my name. "Sarah!" Chuck is on board. Morgan is with him. I am so happy to see him that I follow his progress across the walkway above us and down the stairs, willing him to me. We kiss. I taste him again, feel him against me. _I'm here, Chuck, I'm still your Sarah._

But as so often, I fall back into habit, start to recoil from his exposure to my risks, forgetting my own recent thoughts. But Chuck will have none of it. He has come for his family - and that clearly includes me - and Chuck has a plan.

I consider how I would feel if our roles were reversed (and something like that happened with the Belgian) and I recognize how desperate I would have been (how desperate I was). ( _What did Casey say? That I carved Chuck's name in Thailand's backside._ ) Chuck methods are less _combative_ , but he has come for me, just as I came for him. He has been desperate.

I will follow Chuck's plan.

ooOoo

In spite of Morgan - or maybe because of him, we are able to get into the heavily protected part of the ship where Hydra is kept, the server that houses it. Frost attempts to get the system uploaded onto a CIA server. Chuck tinkers with a bit of the hardware. I can't see what he is doing. I end up giving Morgan my coat, my black coat since his wet suit was destroyed by the lasers protecting Hydra.

Frost realizes that Hydra can only be activated by Volkoff's voice command at almost the same time as Volkoff voice rings through the room: Volkoff arrives with henchmen in tow. We are taken captive.

Volkoff begins a version of the "I am disappointed" speech that ended with Yuri ended, bullet embrained. I am immediately afraid for Frost, more than I was when Volkoff first entered. But Volkoff is overconfident, and he has never faced Frost as a known adversary before. Quicker than Volkoff can react, Frost pushes him and takes his gun from him. She wheels, putting her back to the wall and pulling Volkoff against her. She tells us to go. Chuck dithers but she tells us again. Volkoff reminds her that the cost of us leaving is that she must stay. It occurs to me as we go that he really does not understand her. She has been paying that cost for almost two decades. She will pay it again.

I have the strongest feeling that Volkoff will not be able to kill her, and I wonder if that is connected to his other troubles where she is concerned.

ooOoo

We make it away from The Contessa, Chuck, and Morgan and I. Beckman has a car waiting to take Chuck to his father's cabin and Morgan back to the hospital. She is following Chuck's plan too. But there is now a serious wrinkle. Volkoff still has Frost and we need Volkoff's recitation of a line from Stalin to get into Hydra. But Chuck is oddly quiet, confident. Confident of his plan - and of all of us. He believes we can each do our part.

He knows that Volkoff is going to come after him, after me, after the family. He explains the plan - what he was doing to the computer, to Hydra, how it will all work. He's playing chess with Volkoff now, I realize, four-dimensional chess. But unlike Volkoff, Chuck is not willing to sacrifice pieces to win. His strategy has to be deeper than that, and it involves trusting his pieces, not mistrusting them.

 _God, his brain is so sexy - and his heart, and so is all the rest of him._

I cuddle against him in the car before he leaves, as tight as I can. I am staying here, since freeing Frost is my part of Chuck's plan. We will meet everyone at the hospital. Ellie is there; it is time for baby Clara to join Team B.

We have not talked yet, Chuck and I, and we need to talk. One reason I am reluctant is that Morgan is sitting in the car with us, and I am reluctant to have our heart to heart become a heart to heart to heart, although Morgan has certainly become my friend. But I have things to say to Chuck alone. My time with Frost has convinced me. I don't expect this to happen all at once, but it needs to happen. We say goodbye, but this time we are in this together, each with a part to play other than waiting.

ooOoo

"Chuck," I begin in a whisper as I finish saying goodbye, "I have some things I want to say to you."

He grins at me. "Me to you too. I seem to recall a speech that got interrupted by all of this."

I grin back at him. "It was a good speech, Chuck. I want to hear the rest of it. I will listen to it anywhere, anytime...with joy…"

He kisses me so gently I almost begin to cry. "I love you, Sarah Walker, always have."

"You too, Chuck, always."

ooOoo

The plan works; each of us does what the others trusted us to do. I save Mary. Chuck tricks Volkoff into the individual recitation of the words of Stalin, so that Hydra can be uploaded to servers Beckman has prepared. She takes Volkoff into custody, I find out later, and lets Chuck use a helicopter to get himself and Morgan to the hospital.

Frost and I drive the car Beckman provided for us, and we reach the hospital at the same time Chuck does, jogging toward the door from the helipad. Morgan is behind, talking to the pilot. Chuck sprints when he sees us. He grabs me and hugs me, then he stares at me.

We had time on the way to stop and change. I washed the black from my hair, the dye from me. I am in my clothes, my hair blonde again.

"You're safe?" I nod. "You're you, again." I nod again. "I'm glad you're...back." I nod a third time. He hugs Mary and we go inside.

For a moment, I think I hear a keytar, but then realize I must be mistaken.

I see John. Casey. He bears no grudge. I could cry at the sight of him, up, even if in a wheelchair.

ooOoo

We are seated in a long hospital hallway. Fluorescent lights but no voices. A janitor is polishing the floor, making it shinier.

We stepped out of the celebration of Clara, after taking our turns with the little one. The feel of her in my arms made me think of the baby at the airport in Moscow.

 _Someday_.

Chuck just keeps looking at me, and I am happy to look at him. I finally understand that cliché, _a sight for sore ey_ es. Just looking at him is a balm to my heart, my soul. I do not know what it is about him...I do not need to know. I divine that he is mine and I am his.

Then I see a decision in his eyes. He stands, pulls out the red velvet box, the one he had in France, opening it.

Butterflies claim my stomach, all of me.

I flutter, head to toe.

I do not just have butterflies, I am one.

 _Metamorphosis complete, caterpillar transcended, even if my wings are dewy and new, my flight erratic._

I do not need the speech; he does not need to give it. I can only watch him, rapt, as he kneels and offers the ring to me, offers himself to me, as he has always offered himself to me, from the first: _My personal baggage handler. My guy. My Chuck._ I kneel in response, mirroring him. I kiss him _yes. My fiancé. My future_.

ooOoo

Later, at our apartment, abed, in the afterglow of lovemaking somehow slow and gentle and completely abandoned, I feel Chuck press against my back, reach around to hold me, and I wrap his arms around me tighter.

"I can't do this all at once, Chuck, or on any regular schedule, but I want, I need to tell you some...stories...Call it a story...sequence...Bear with me, please."

With him holding me, but with me not looking at him, I begin. "I told you about when I was seventeen, about breaking into Gail's boyfriend's house, taking Robert's pen. But I did not tell you what happened soon afterward..."

I pause, finding the courage for the words now, after almost four years of knowing Chuck, and so many years after the fact. Chuck's embrace tightens. "Soon afterward, I first met Langston Graham…"

* * *

 **A/N2** Almost done with canon. One story left. Tune in next time for Chapter 52, "For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part One): Auld Lang Syne". Carina returns, Amy and Zondra in tow. CATs. Meow!

Trying to write inside of canon is a little like changing clothes in a phone booth - and keep in mind, I was a serious football player in the day (with the knees to prove it). It's been a particularly tight fit. I will be glad to get to the original, post-finale story. But first, _Bell_ will be two longish chapters.

I know some have undoubtedly gotten fatigued. Thanks to those who have stuck around. I am proud of this long story, a serious story.

Thoughts?

Zettel

Phase Three and the Volkoff infiltration are, in my view, very important to the architectonic of the show. They are Janus-faced: looking back to Chuck's 'darkening' in S3, and ahead to Sarah's 'reset' in the finale.


	52. For Whom the Bell Tolls (One)

**A/N1** Exploring a new formal twist here, first-person present tense POV that represents the past. Framed by a new bit of section-break typography.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

 _For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part One)_ :

 _Auld Lange Syne_

* * *

She keeps it simple  
And I am thankful for her kind of lovin'  
'Cause it's simple  
No longer do we wonder if we're together  
We're way past that  
And I've already asked her  
So in January, we're gettin' married

She's talkin' to me with her voice  
Down so low I barely hear her  
But I know what she's sayin'  
I understand because my heart and hers are the same  
And in January we're gettin' married

And I was sick with heartache  
And she was sick like Audrey Hepburn when I met her  
But we would both surrender  
True love is not the kind of thing you should turn down  
Don't ever turn it down

I hope that I don't sound too insane when I say  
There is darkness all around us  
I don't feel weak but I do need sometimes for her to protect me  
And reconnect me to the beauty that I'm missin'  
And in January we're gettin' married...

\- The Avett Brothers, _January Wedding_

* * *

I am standing in the Buy More, just inside, preparing to walk toward Chuck Bartowski. I have read the file, been briefed. I know him. I push my recent troubles with Graham aside, make myself forget about Mom and the baby. _Mission_. Mission. _Focus, Sarah!_ This will be a piece of…

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

...Wedding cake.

I am standing in the aisle at the church, just at the beginning. Bells are tolling, music begins to play. Everyone stands. I am preparing to walk toward Chuck Bartowski. I know him; I love him. I push my recent brush with death aside, forget my residual weakness. _Life_. This is my life. I am going to marry Chuck Bartowski. _Focus, Sarah!_

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

I gaze down the aisle. Chuck is standing there, gazing back at me with the same wonder I know fills my gaze. His tux is beautiful; Chuck is beautiful. I feel like a princess. I feel like a woman. I feel like a human being.

I am not alone in the world.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

I start toward the Nerd Herd desk Chuck is standing at. Beneath my confidence in my mission, my abilities, I feel an ache, one that I stopped ignoring when I cared for the baby in Budapest and that grew more intense when I left her and my mother behind. Acute loneliness. I have worked for years, mostly alone. But not because I am a loner. It has been necessary, given the job; I have just grown used to it, the barrenness and the emptiness of my life.

I am alone in the world.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Across the aisle from Chuck - Ellie and Carina and Zondra. Ellie, soon to be my sister. Carina and Zondra: here, at my real, honest-to-God, in-front-of-God-and-everybody non-cover _wedding_.

My sister, my friends…

I am not alone in the world.

* * *

Chuck decided to invite the CATs for a bachelorette party. Without asking Sarah, of course: a surprise. Sarah had not gotten to the CATs in her storytelling to Chuck. She was still telling him about Leipzig, a little at a time, once in a while.

When Sarah found out that the CATs were coming, she panicked. (A little like her reaction when Chuck pushed about high school after Heather Chandler came to town. But, this time, without a pencil daggering any pictures.) Chuck thought it was because the CATs had been wild - and while that was true enough of Carina and Amy, it really had not been true of Sarah and Zondra, both of whom were too 'business' for partying. Sarah had never been comfortable with that. She had always felt too exposed, too vulnerable. She could do it as a cover and had done it, but as herself, not really, not much. She would not only have felt exposed to strangers, but to the CATs themselves.

Although she had hoped for it with Bryce, she had never been willing to open herself at all to anyone else - and that included the CATs. Despite her personal hunger for contact, she feared it - and it was a professional anathema. She had shared time with the CATs, but barely any information that was not an operational necessity.

Carina had made various correct, educated guesses about Sarah, but Sarah had confirmed few, if any, at least back in those days. Sarah and Zondra had always been focused on preparation, training, competing, on missions. They had not spent time in girl-talk. True, they had come to regard each other as friends, but it was a shared-activity, push-each-other, John-Casey-no-goddamn-ladyfeelings friendship.

 _Snake-blood sisters_.

Perhaps, if everything had not gone south, their friendship would have changed character, ratcheted down, grew close, but it had not. Things had gone south and their parting was bitter, an old regret of Sarah's and one she took to be irreparable.

No, Sarah's panic was not because she feared the CATs would tell Chuck stories of non-cover wild partying, but in part, because they could tell Chuck more than Sarah so far had managed about Agent Walker, her past - they could say things about who she was, her reputation, the way she had been, or the way they thought she had been.

It was also in part because of things going south. Sarah had been AIC; she regarded the CATs' failure as hers, and she _hated_ to fail. She still believed, half-believed anyway, that Zondra had betrayed them, her.

But her panic was also in part because she had changed so much, and she was unsure what the CATs would make of the new Sarah.

Her changes had never been on display before anyone but enemies from the old days (Heather Chandler) and she was immediately worried about it, and about Chuck's reaction if the CATs were disenchanted with the new Sarah, and _blamed_ him for changing her.

Sarah tried to prepare him for all this, telling him that Carina (the only CAT he knew) had been 'the mellow one' (Sarah's usual gift for unhelpful understatement, especially about her past). There was truth in it: despite her wildcard ways, Carina (whatever her regrets about her own past) had been more settled, more completely comfortable with her chosen life and station in it than the other three had been: Amy felt type-cast, Zondra underutilized, and Sarah exploited. Only Amy ever gave insistent voice to her feelings, but the feelings of the other two were detectable in their behavior, at least to the other three CATs

And Agent Walker had certainly never been _mellow_ \- that would have been among the final adjectives applied to her.

* * *

Although I admit, standing there, at the end of the aisle, preparing to walk to Chuck, I felt... _mellow_.

Ready, absolutely ready to do this, _ripe_ \- and ready. An apple, reddened by the sun's sweet kiss, heavy and...mellow. So very ready.

This was what I have always dreamed of, even back when I kept myself from knowing my dreams. Even back when my only acknowledged dream was my corpse dream. That dream is now far from me. I am gloriously and finely and sensitively alive, about to walk down the aisle, to become Chuck's wife.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

 _One line_ , the woman at the Farm tells me, if I want to walk in heels as the CIA would have me do, made-over as I am. Heels a part of my arsenal.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

But the heels I am wearing now are not part of an arsenal, they are for me and my husband-to-be. Still, _one line_ , the line that leads me to him - not a thin, blood-red line, as I imagined when Volkoff sent me to kill Casey, but one bright, golden thread, leading me home.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Casey steps to me. He offers to walk me down the aisle. My breath catches. Another friend, forged of combat and difficulty, mutual respect and understanding. I am not alone in the world. Dad is not here but Casey steps into the gap. I take Casey's arm and I notice Carina smirking at the other end of the aisle. At Casey. _Prague, I guess._ Chuck and I have come so far since our Prague.

* * *

There was nothing Sarah could do to stop it; Chuck had set it in motion; there was no recall.

The CATs helicoptered back into her life. Literally. They dropped a rope; Sarah went up and away, leaving Chuck staring blindly but happily into the helicopter's lights.

On board, Amy gave Sarah an immediate hug, gushing her name. "Sarah!" Carina grabbed her next and hugged her too, whispering in Sarah's ear loudly enough for her to hear it over the rhythmic thump of the rotors, "So you did it?" Carina released Sarah and gave her a look. Sarah nodded shyly. Carina smiled despite shaking her head.

Sarah smiled and used Carina's words from long ago. "Don't let anyone have the final say on you but you, right, Carina?"

Carina threw her head back and laughed. "Exactly, Headstone." Carina then looked at Sarah again, really looked at her. "I guess that nickname needs to be deep-sixed, huh, Walker?"

Sarah nodded happily, glad to put 'Headstone' behind her.

Amy had sat down and been listening without quite understanding. Zondra, unlike Amy and Carina, never stood. She looked away when Sarah turned to her.

"Zondra."

"Walker."

"Not for long."

"Hard to believe."

"That I would get married?"

"That anyone would marry you."

Sarah winced internally. She had expected this. Zondra passed the lie detector test, but she and Sarah had no interaction since then, zero. Zondra's words stung. Sarah recalled the last words Zondra had said to her:

 _"But we are done, Walker. I was wrong about you. I thought there was a core of something, something real, in you. Maybe you don't like the job, but I now know how you can do it. There's no one at home, is there, Walker? You don't like the job - but that hasn't stopped you from becoming the job."_

Sarah had carried those words like a curse since Zondra spoke them. They had come back to her often during the long, lonely nights of her first two years in Burbank. Haunted her and tormented her. _No one at home. Empty. I am the job._

Zondra turns away and Sarah lets her, still unable to shake the combined notions that there had to have been a mole and that the evidence pointed to Zondra.

The rest of the evening rapidly became a blur. They landed, went to a shop, bought Sarah a party dress. They went to the first club. Amy and Carina became the party directors. Alcohol rivered over Sarah; she went under, repeatedly. She was never a serious drinker. Maybe the last time she had really drank a lot was the night after the CATs fell apart.

Sarah was unsure why Zondra had come. Zondra drank - but more _beside_ the other three than _with_ them. Sarah felt Zondra's eyes on her all evening, increasingly skeptical, puzzled. Zondra was having a hard time with Sarah, with the changed Sarah. She seemed to both dislike and disbelieve the changes, but it was unclear how those attitudes could be simultaneous. Maybe they were rapidly alternating. Sarah was too woozy to decide.

They went on from club to club, state to state, the blur became a blur, Sarah lost track of where she was, almost of who she was. At one point, she was dancing with a short, heavy-set older man who looked like he once ran Russia, but that could not have been right.

But Sarah knew Carina was watching over her, keeping tabs on her and what was happening. And so, despite the constant, not-so-subtle waves of hostility radiating off Zondra, Sarah gave herself over to her bachelorette party, CATs-style; she had a good time.

The last thing she remembered was leaning on Carina, walking to her bedroom in the apartment, having invited the others to sleep in the apartment since it was too late to find a hotel. Carina got her to the bedroom. Chuck was in bed, fast asleep. Carina looked at him, then Sarah, and gave Sarah a final smirk for the evening.

"Guess the spies won't be playing _Find the Microfiche_ tonight, Walker."

The alcohol responded, not Sarah: "Jokes on you, _Miller_. So _not_ microooo…" Carina gasped and Sarah face-planted beside her sleeping fiancé.

* * *

I had not remembered saying that until just now. _I can't believe I said that. Drinking too much is a bad idea; I was right about that, even in the old days. Operational error._ I can feel my cheeks burning, the blush seeping down my neck toward my bare shoulders.

I put my hand in the crook of Casey's arm and I start walking toward Chuck.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Chuck and I are in one of the leather chairs in a Listening Room at _Pressing and Grinding._ The door is locked. We have been...pressing and grinding. I am panting a little; I can't help it. Chuck is smiling at me, as always thrilled by my pleasure as much as or more than his own. I-Jodi seems solidly happy with her new boyfriend. She waited on us at the counter and smiled at _both_ of us. Gave us the Listening Room gladly, winked at me when Chuck wasn't looking.

We have been coming to _Pressing and Grinding_ during slow times between missions, talking about our future and about my past. I do not find the talk about my past easy, although it is easier than I thought it might be, and it gets incrementally easier (at least in general; some parts remain hard to tell). I've been telling Chuck about the Farm. The topic tonight was seduction class - and my time as Hannah Traylor's roommate.

We both squirmed as I told the story, both thinking about past missions, Cole Barker, Manoosh Depak, Sasha Banacheck... Telling him about that also meant telling him more about Dad, about how my time with him prepared me for my miseducation at the Farm. Chuck knows - because I have explained it - what my limits have been, what I would and would not do, have and have not done. But telling him about my training casts a strange light back on our time together. Although I know Chuck trusted me then and trusts me now, telling the story makes my actions seem odd even to me, always dual, always open to more than one interpretation. All my actions, up to an including this one, talking about seduction class. I realize anew how much I asked of Chuck on the beach when I asked him to trust me, the pain and suffering the keeping of his promise to do so has involved.

Catching my breath, I give him a look, slow-burning blue: not _seduction_ , but genuinely seductive. He trusts it. "Chuck?"

"Yeah?"

"Put on that Devo album, you know, _New Traditionalists_."

He grins but his eyes widen. "I thought you just put up with that album _because_ \- because, you know, I like it. And I keep playing it…"

I grin back, feel my heart beginning to pick up the pace again. I drop my hand below his belt. "Let's just say that it's grown on me." Chuck's eyes widen more, glaze, his pupils dilate. "Put on _Jerkin' Back and Forth_ , Chuck _._ " His eyes clear enough to register a question. I answer: "It's time for some interpretive dance."

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

My blush deepens at the memory. I am not only ripe, ready for the wedding. I am ready, so ready, ripe for the honeymoon. Our second. We had our first before we got married.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

I look at Chuck as I start to walk toward him. He's blushing too. Good. The dress works.

I've never had anyone look at me with such uncomplicated love.

And then I know one among the countless things that make him so dear to me: despite all my complications, despite my internal crossword puzzle labyrinth of boxes and cells, he keeps it simple:

 _I love you, Sarah, I trust you._

His text to me in Russia. To Russia - with love. _Take that, James Bond_.

 _You too, Chuck, you too: I love you too. I trust you too. Thanks for being strong enough, strong enough to be my man._

* * *

 **A/N2** Slight change of plan. This story will be three shorter chapters instead of two longer ones. I decided I liked the breakdown of the material better that way. Tune in next time for Chapter 53, "For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part Two): Wedding March".

How about a review? Let me know if you are still out there. Oh, and are you seated groom-side or bride-side at the wedding?

Z

 _A note on formal variations (for those interested in the technical side of things)._ I haven't been doing this first- to third-person, present to past tense shifting just for the hell of it, or for show. It is internal to my conception of the story. We start with Sarah distanced from herself, aware of herself according to what Arthur Schopenhauer once called 'acquired character', then we gradually begin to find out what it is like in her head, the give and take of her controlled, Spartan, occurrent thoughts. Over time, as her self-knowledge grows, the third-person POV and the first-person POV become more similar, grow fuller, less fraught, less frantic, feature far less doubling-back and second-guessing and self-contradiction. Self-denials continue, but they become more deliberate, less automatic. She begins to own herself and her emotions. And so on, and so on. By the time we are here, we have Sarah in the round, coming slowly into full possession of herself. Early on, the POV shifts also worked to dichotomize Sarah. Later, as she is overcoming her dichotomy (but facing choices that might dichotomize her again), she begins to use the 'Agent Walker' device, dichotomizing herself in a certain way from her past, but not as she did while she was Agent Walker.


	53. For Whom the Bell Tolls (Two)

**A/N1** We are now reaping the rewards of previous chapters, settling a few outstanding debts. Stand up, all. The bride is about to walk down the aisle. Cue the Mendelssohn!

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

 _For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part Two)_ :

 _Wedding March_

* * *

I don't want to say "I want you"  
Even though I want you so much.  
It's wrapped up in conversation,  
It's whispered in a hush.

Though I'm frightened by the word,  
Think it's time I made it heard.  
No more empty self-possession,  
Visions swept under the mat.  
It's no New Year's resolution,  
It's more than that.

Now I wake up happy  
Warm in lovers embrace.  
No one else can touch us  
While we're in this place.  
So I'll sing it to the world  
This simple message to my girl.

No more empty self-possession,  
Visions swept under the mat.  
It's no New Year's resolution,  
It's more than that.

\- Crowded House, _Message to My Girl_

* * *

I take a step down the aisle, Casey letting me set the pace.

I look around me and lock eyes with Mary. She smiles at me, her eyes happy and sad all at once.

I know she has a hard time seeing me and Chuck and not seeing herself and Stephen. She worries. Worries about me and my choices, about my ability to combine spying and marriage.

Mary, Frost, has been restless, unsettled. She has started spying again. Burbank, despite Ellie and Devon and Clara, despite Chuck and me, is hard for her. Everything here is a reminder of what she gave up or lost, what she gave up or had taken away.

I smile at her; my heart aches for her. Like the soldier who returns from war and cannot forge a truce with peacetime, she wants to be somewhere she does not want to be.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

I realize my white dress is my white flag. My truce has come - my truce with myself. The long warfare of _Sarah vs. Sarah_ is ending today.

The troops are marching home.

It is time for the formal treaty.

I am surrendering to myself.

* * *

Sarah woke up face-down in her party dress. _Not quite right. Brain fuzzy, head full of helicopters. Rotors thumping. I am face-down wearing my party dress._ Chuck was eager to hear about the night and Sarah told him what she remembered. _That was Gorbachev!_

She also told him about why she called inviting the CATs "opening a Pandora's Box". Sarah added quickly and there were still hard feelings. Sarah was sure Zondra will be at it again this morning, waves of attitude breaking against a roomful of hangovers. Sarah wanted Chuck to be ready. But he still did not seem fully to grasp the hard feelings.

They endured an eternal Torquemada breakfast.

Chuck was chipper and tried to enliven the deadened table. Amy chirped along too. Even Carina made a token effort, although Sarah could tell a part of Carina was secretly enjoying the awkwardness of it all. Carina was obviously enjoying Morgan's discomfort, but that was a different issue. Zondra remained openly hostile toward Sarah and, even worse for Sarah, openly contemptuous of Chuck.

Sarah could not tell if Zondra really felt contempt for Chuck (she had just met him) or whether the contempt was aimed at Chuck but really for Sarah. It was confusing and Sarah was having a hard time ignoring Zondra's attitude. Even worse, Sarah's own hangover was throbbing away, and the awkwardness of the breakfast was adding to the pain - and the pain was adding to her annoyance that Chuck had surprised her with all this.

Breakfast finally ended. Finally, it was time for the CATs to leave. Sarah felt her head begin to ease. They went outside, preparing to separate, bachelorette party done, nothing resolved. But then Sarah's Porsche exploded.

Everyone was fine, except Carina who took a piece of shrapnel. Chuck flashed on it. It was part of an explosive. After a quick discussion, Sarah decided she would take Carina to the hospital. Amy and Zondra decided to stay to find out what was going on, keep an eye on the scene. Chuck was going to Castle; he would call Beckman on the way to get a team to come and see about the wreckage _asap_.

ooOoo

Sarah got in the taxi with Carina. Carina's leg was bleeding still but not heavily, and she was keeping a towel pressed against it. Sarah made up a story about a fall and gave the driver instructions, who had taken his headphones off to hear her. He put the headphones back on.

Carina grimaced, moved her leg into a more comfortable position, then turned to look at Sarah.

"No talking last night, too much music, too much alcohol, too much dancing. But now, with Zondra and her death glare gone, tell me, Sarah, how are you?"

"I'm great," Sarah said, smiling. "I'm great here."

Carina gave her a look. "Not so much the last time I was in town."

Sarah's smile flipped. "True, that was...a hard time...and it got harder."

"But you two made it out, got to the other side of it, I see."

A hint of the smile returned, and Sarah gazed into the distance. "Eventually. It was touch-and-go for a while."

"Well, don't let Zondra get you down. Chuck is a good guy, Sarah. As good as you think he is. And you deserve him more than you know."

"Really? The woman you called 'Headstone' _deserves_ a guy like Chuck?"

Carina's expression complicated itself. "Sarah, why do you think I called you that?"

Sarah shrugged, then whispered. "I don't know, I guess...Enforcer. Ice Queen. 'Tight-assed, ascetic...assassin'."

Carina's eyes widened, recognizing her own words to Sarah, but she looked away for a second, then back, her face sober. "Well, yeah, sure, that was all part of it. But that was really never the point, Sarah. Look, from the beginning, it was obvious, to me, anyway, that you were the best at a job - Enforcing - you hated in the worst way, but that you were unwilling to recognize your hatred for it. It was as though you were your own undertaker, burying yourself daily." Carina's serious look made way for a secretive grin. "Did you know I majored in _psychology_?"

Sarah shook her head. Disbelief.

"Yeah, really. Honors student. I told you, I graduated smart, even if it took a while. I mean, it is true that I have stunning natural talents" - she waved at herself, all along the length of her - "but I excel at seduction because of this," she tapped her temple. "My secret weapon. I understand people. I knew early on you were fighting a war of attrition with yourself. I thought you were eventually going to run out of you. I guess I felt for your plight, couldn't help it," Carina seemed a bit embarrassed admitting it, "and 'Headstone' was an attempt to get you to understand something about yourself. That you were worth much more than you seemed to think."

Sarah stared at Carina. "You are a deep old file, Carina Miller."

Carina flashed a wicked smile. "'Deeper than did ever plummet sound'…"

Before Carina could say it, Sarah did: "I know, I know. _You graduated smart_."

Carina nodded assertively. "Damn straight." She pursed her lips. "So, what's the deal with Martin?"

* * *

The bomb in the Porsche ended up tracing back to Ricky, a.k.a. Augusto Gaez, the CATs' old nemesis.

Tracking him down took the CATs, accompanied by Chuck and Casey, to Brazil. Gaez found them, but they had been about to get the name of the mole when Chuck fell into the scene from a skylight. Sarah, so close to finally putting a failure to rights, to finding out if she was right to have mistrusted Zondra all this time, became furious with Chuck. But she knew that she was as furious as she was because Zondra's attitude, directed toward her and toward Chuck, was weighing on Sarah. She had tucked the pain of parting with Zondra away, but it was back; she felt it and it caused her to be more short-tempered with Chuck than he really deserved. (Later, I would apologize, and so would he.)

It turned out that Amy was the mole. Once she knew it, Sarah could have kicked herself. Amy had been mixed up with Gaez from almost the beginning. She saw a place for herself in his organization denied to her in the CIA, a place that allowed her to take a certain vengeance on the CIA. She had allowed Gaez to beat her that night long ago, allowed him to do it savagely enough that it had genuinely frightened her (though not deterred her) and completely convinced Sarah and the others, effectively shielding Amy from suspicion all this time. It turned out the former cheerleader really was good at covers; the CIA had ignored a talent and it cost them. Not that it excused Amy; she went away when Gaez did.

Sarah was able to get Carina and Zondra to agree to be in the wedding.

* * *

Sarah gave Zondra a ride to the airport in the car Beckman rented for her. Silence reigned.

Zondra finally spoke, stopping the shower of nothing. "Look, Walker...Sarah...I'm sorry for how I acted here, and how I reacted long ago. By staying away I know I made myself look more guilty, but my pride…"

Sarah glanced from the road to her rediscovered friend. "Mine too, Zondra…"

"And, Chuck. I mean, I get it. Carina told me he was cute-ish. But she should've dropped the _-ish_. He's cute. He's funny. He absolutely adores you. And you with him...I get that too. You're lit up around him, not in the shadows that used to follow you around. In the light. Home."

Sarah pulled the car into the drop-off lane. She turned off the engine and turned to Zondra. "Thanks, Zondra. I'd hate to think we drank snake's blood together for nothing."

Zondra shook her head. "I only drink that with you, you know. But I'm guessing that won't be on the free bar at the wedding?"

Sarah grinned. "No, probably not. But my home is always going to be a place where you can come, Zondra. And Chuck's not big on daily runs," Zondra gave Sarah a smirk at that, "and so when you come for the wedding, maybe we could run on the beach together again."

"You know I am faster than you, right?" Zondra asked. "I mean, I ran track in college. I only let you believe you were any competition..."

Sarah gave her a smirk. "Yeah, but my legs are longer and, frankly... _better_."

Zondra opened the door and got out, leaving it open while she grabbed her suitcase from the backseat. She leaned down and gave Sarah a flat look. "It's so _on_ , Sarah."

Sarah laughed and Zondra shut the door.

Then Zondra pecked on the window, and Sarah hit the button, lowering it. Zondra rattled off some numbers. "My cell. Keep in touch. Text me so I will have your number." Sarah blinked back tears and nodded.

* * *

We've kept in touch since then. Not all the time, but enough for me to know what she's doing, for her to know what I am doing. We didn't get a chance to run together. When she came back into town, I was literally on ice, poisoned by Vivian Volkoff's Norseman. But she helped Chuck save me, and she told me about it as she helped me get dressed for the wedding. She and Carina talked me through my final bout of nerves, telling me in glowing terms about Chuck's heroism, Russian Special Forces, the showdown with Decker. My nerves vanish. I allow myself a brief smirk, the coin of exchange between us so often: "Told you. I picked a good one." Both nod, acknowledging the truth of what I say. I went to Thailand for Chuck, fought killers and cobras. He went to Russia for me and faced down the US government, risked war to save me.

Carina stops nodding. "It was about damn time you did, Walker." We all laugh and I get up to take my place at the end of the aisle.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Zondra smiles at me as I come down the aisle, marching to Chuck. But the smile is all congratulation, no disbelief, all encouragement.

I look from Zondra to Carina. I reflect on a conversation with Carina, one that has been on my mind lately, one that shaped the vows I have written. I told her once that what I needed from a man could not be taken. I was right; it had to be given, _a gift_. Casey puts my hand in Chuck's hand. I am ready to take my vows, to acknowledge my gift.

Morgan clears his throat. I cannot believe I am here. I feel the long dissociated parts of me reassembling, binding together.

My education has been long, slow and painful - I have suffered into knowledge. I have had to learn and unlearn so much. It is time for the graduation ceremony I never got to have, not from high school, not from the Farm: my graduation from the life I had to have to the life I want. Captivity to freedom.

I look into Chuck's eyes. This is where I am supposed to be.

I hear _Pomp and Circumstance_ in the final strains of _The Wedding March._

 _Marry us, Morgan_!

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for Chapter 54, "For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part Three): The Honeymooners", the final chapter of Book Two, **Sarah vs. Sarah.** About three more chapters or so of fanfiction from me, and then you folks are rid of me.


	54. For Whom the Bell Tolls (Three)

**A/N1** We have reached the end of my treatment of canon.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

 _For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part Three)_ :

 _The Honeymooners_

* * *

I am in love  
I am in love

And I am a fool  
There is no other

I am in love  
I am in love

Into the fire  
Tears start coming  
Good stars surround us  
It's enough to want to make you wonder

\- Crowded House, _I Am in Love_

* * *

I am in love.

I am the richest woman on the planet.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

I was that was before we discovered Volkoff's - Hartley's - gift to us. Millions. Hundreds of millions. Ridiculous. _Inconceivable._ And, to be honest, I did not care about a penny of it. All I cared about was Morgan getting us to the airport after we ran into the apartment to change.

Morgan kept the car running; I gave him strict instructions. We had clothes ready and got changed quickly, although I had to keep averting my eyes. The sight of my husband - stop, think it again: _my husband_ \- in nothing but boxers clothed my mind in immediate fantasies; I trembled with desire. But I made myself hold back: time enough soon enough for that. _Yes._ I was so in love that I could hardly breathe, so burstingly full of longing. Longing and belonging, fire and peace. My love for Chuck.

I meant each and every word of my vows, the meaning carrying up from my toes, through my heart and lungs and out as each word became life on my lips. And Chuck's impromptu vows in response, my beautiful baggage handler still, my friend, and my lover, and ( _someday_ ) the father of my children.

My Chuck.

I am a woman. A human being. _A normal girl_. I know now what 'normal' meant all this time. Not statistically average. Not conforming to some conventional ideal. That is not me, not us.

No, 'normal' means _real, chosen, deliberate_...but mostly it means _real_.

I have gradually found my old pattern of thinking, my old conviction that reality comes in degrees, to have been unsatisfactory, a self-protective relic. There is _real_ and there is _not real_ : Hamlet was right and Chuck was right; there are no degrees. That does not mean there are not different kinds of things, things that last and things that don't, things that are meaningful and things that aren't. It also doesn't mean that there aren't unreal things, fake or pretend or false things. But fake or pretend or false things are still real things - just not the things they pass themselves off as being. A fake gun is not a real gun. But it is a real fake gun. A cover identity is not a real identity, but it is a real cover identity.

I tried for years think of covers as sort of real and sort of not real, sometimes stressing their nearness to _real_ when I felt myself empty, no one in particular, vanishing among aliases; sometimes stressing their nearness to _not real_ when I thought of what I had done while undercover, when guilt and remorse threatened to swallow me, and I craved escape.

I don't want to live in that fluxy, riverrun world anymore, poison-gray, mercurial. I want to live in _the world_ , the stable real world, a world full of darkness and danger, yes, but also full of beauty and reward. A world that changes, yes, but sometimes for the better.

I look at Chuck. He is changed - dressed and ready. So am I. Changed.

We half-run to the still-running limo. Morgan wheels us to the airport. I see nothing on the outside on the way; I am lost in kisses from my husband. My husband. My real husband. Hungry kisses. Real kisses. Love. Real love.

 _Real love in the spy life._

 _We had somehow turned the spy life inside-out, put it on with the tags facing outward._

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

What was I doing that night when I kept vigil over Chuck, the night after our first date? What did it mean that I took my shoes off when I walked to him? I was supposed to be protecting him - and I was - but I now know that something else was happening too, some shift deep inside me, the beginning of changes so massive...plate tectonics. My feet were bare because my boots were bad in the sand, and because I have always been a toes-in-the-sand woman - but I was barefoot because I already knew my fate, at a level deeper than my consciousness could then reach. Chuck would bare me, find me, behind the barricades, behind the blanknesses, behind the strategies for keeping myself distanced...from everyone, everything.

I asked him to trust me and he did. That trust has been the rich soil out of which Sarah Bartowski grew.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

What was he doing, trusting me? What had I done to deserve it?

Nothing, really, except lie to him, point a gun at him?

But he did trust me. And that trust was proof that my dad and Graham were wrong, wrong at the most basic level and about basic human realities. Heart, hearth, and home. The foci of the life I want, a human life. Chuck's trust changed me. But it changed Chuck too. I changed him. He had been squandering himself for years, been unjust to himself for years. Sold himself short, sold himself cheap. He needed someone to rally him, rouse him, believe in him. And I did, I do. _I just did 'I do'._

He has actualized potentials I did not know or only barely suspected I had. I have done the same for him. It is not obvious anyone else could have done that for me, including me. The same is true for Chuck. He is my iron; I am his: iron sharpens iron.

We grew together in the shadow-works of the spy life.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Before we board the plane, we find we have been upgraded, now seated in first class. Another gift from Hartley. He must have had help. Beckman.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Ellie had been in the church room with me and with Carina and Zondra as I got dressed. We had all been laughing and talking. Ellie was getting ready to go to the church room Chuck, Casey, Devon, and Morgan were in. She was worried about what might happen if the four of them were left unsupervised for too long.

She gazed at me, her face aglow. She loved me and I loved her: sisters. _I have a sister._

"I was worried that we would never get here, Sarah. The Norseman thing: you and Chuck, who else but the two of you could have faced that and faced it down, who else but you would be here so soon afterward, putting on her wedding dress."

I sighed. "I would have had you push me down the aisle on a gurney, Ellie. There is no way this was not happening today."

Ellie looked around them, nervously. "Maybe you shouldn't have said that, Sarah."

I laughed softly. "I've made a vow to myself today. I am going to stop thinking that the universe is against me. I'm here, alive. Mary is here. Chuck is here. I wish Stephen were, for Chuck's sake, and yours, and Mary's, all of our sakes - but that was Shaw, not the universe."

A flash of pain showed on Ellie's face, but then it mixed with curiosity. "Did you really almost choose to go to DC with that Shaw guy over staying here and working it out with Chuck?"

I looked at the floor. "Someday, Ellie, when we're both happy and relaxed and sitting in the bright sun with umbrella drinks, I will tell you about all that."

Ellie's tone dropped, even though Carina and Zondra were loudly arguing with each other about whether a machine gun would actually fit under their bridesmaid dresses. "Well, I blame Chuck. He had a grim few months after Jill and Stanford, but they were not nearly as dark as those days...after he came back from... _Prague_?"

I nodded. "I don't blame Chuck, Ellie, and he doesn't blame me. We had things to sort out and we wouldn't face them, wouldn't sort them, and then we allowed other people to get caught up in our mutual cowardice and misery. We each believed we had risked everything and lost it, and neither one of us could face the prospect of losing more or losing again." I rubbed the corner of one eye with the bend of my wrist. "I'm going to mess up my makeup."

Ellie reached out to put her hand on my forearm. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked. It's just that so much has happened between you two that I'm only now beginning to understand. I knew you two fought for each other, but I didn't know hard or how many times the battle was almost lost."

I brightened a bit. "It's true, Ellie. I thought it was over so many times - but not once did I want it to be over, not even when I wanted the suffering to be over. Not even in the early days, when I fought against what I felt, denied it."

"Well, I couldn't be happier you two both proved so resilient, that you were willing to fight for each other, change _for_ each other and _with_ each other. Love changes you and it keeps changing you, or it stops being love - at least that's my expert opinion." Ellie grinned but tried to set her shoulders, look authoritative, "the opinion of a brain surgeon married to a heart surgeon." When Sarah shook her head and chuckled, Ellie stuck her tongue out at Sarah, then chuckled too.

"You know, Casey's changed a lot too, Sarah."

"Yes, he has. I was thinking about that, about my first date with Chuck." Ellie looked confused but I went on. "It ended bizarrely, as you know. But Chuck stepped in between me and Casey when we were fighting over which of us, and which agency, was going to...well, _own_ him, which one he needed more. And Chuck looked at us both and told us that _we_ needed _him_. I've thought about that a lot lately; I wonder if it has ever crossed Casey's mind?"

Carina seemed finally to hear them; her argument with Zondra had ended. "Casey? what about Casey? And did someone mention _Prague_? Because, let me tell you, Ellie..."

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

As we took our seats on the plane, Chuck noticed me smiling. "What?"

"Morgan," I said, unhelpfully.

"What about the little bearded guy?"

I leaned toward Chuck's ear. "When he gets home, Alex is going to tell him she is pregnant."

Chuck jerked back, his face shocked. But when he saw me smiling his eyes narrowed. "Is she?"

I shook my head, giggling. "No, but she's going to let him believe it long enough to get a picture of his face for me."

He gave me a sideways glance. "Why would you two do that to our little buddy?" Chuck's mind was spinning.

I catch Chuck's eyes and mouth one word: "Barstow."

It clicks over. Shaking his head, he gives me a serious look. "Remind me often, Sarah, that you have a _long_ memory…And that you are capable of…" - he slows, widening his eyes, mock-trembling - "...cruel revenge."

I give him an arched-eyebrow look. "Don't you forget it. Spy, remember. Morgan kept me from having something I wanted in the worst possible way." I lick my lips. "And, at least one morning on this honeymoon, we are going to reprise Barstow, but make sure it all comes out right this time…

"But don't worry, I also left Alex with a gift card for that hot new dim sum place Morgan's been desperate to try, and I got them a table, even though the waitlist stretches on for weeks. I figure he'll forgive me - and I know he'll forgive Alex."

"Revenge is a dish best served as dim sum?"

I give Chuck my most inscrutable look. "Yes - as _cold_ dim sum."

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

We arrive in Chile and a car is waiting. The driver takes us to the Tierra Patagonia Adventure and Spa Hotel. The structure of the Hotel, all wood and glass, takes our breath away. Emerald lakes and white-capped mountain ranges surround the Hotel, which overlooks the Torres del Paine National Park. We wanted to go someplace on the edge of the world, somewhere we could be outside when we weren't in bed, someplace neither of us had been while we were spying. Someplace where we could be just a honeymooning couple, and where no one knew us. Chuck had found the place and suggested it; I was enthusiastic immediately.

By the time we arrived and settled into our suite, we were both too tired for anything but a quick bite and then a shower. We enjoyed some teasing cuddling afterward but fell asleep at almost the same time.

The wedding day had been exhausting, the trip here - but the days leading up...to the wedding had been...stressful too, what with the Norseman poisoning and the Russian Special Forces and...

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

The next morning we get Barstow to come out right. So very right.

Alex sends us a picture of Morgan's' pure-panic face and a picture of the two of them eating at the dim sum restaurant. Evidently, Morgan acknowledged that he had gotten his just deserts, as well as his just dessert, a beautiful egg tart.

Chuck and I laugh over the pictures, then we make love again, slowly, attending to detail, before we head to the restaurant for breakfast. Later, we will go horseback riding toward Sierra del Toro, and then down to Lake Sarmiento.

I have not yet told Chuck about my old, brief mission at a dude ranch in Arizona, where my cover was as a riding instructor. That story is coming up and it is a story I will enjoy telling.

We have a lot to talk about, my husband and I. We have days and days ahead of us to do it. Our honeymoon.

And for the first time in my life, I am sure, absolutely sure I have plenty to say - and that I will say it. My heart and my mouth are not distant from one another. I might never be long-winded, but I am not going to be as silent as the grave.

I start talking as the waiter seats us: "I love you, Chuck."

* * *

 _End of_ **Book Two: Sarah vs. Sarah**

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

* * *

 **A/N2** So ends Book Two, more or less quietly, as Book One began.

Thanks for reading.

Zettel


	55. Hollow Woman? (One)

**A/N1** So, all this happened: S5, and then the faulty Intersect, Quinn, amnesia. _Shit_.

Give our heroine a little space and a little time, folks; she's trying to work out how to have a full heart and a partly empty head.

This will take us a few chapters, one or two more than I predicted, I think. Back to a less compressed, more prosy prose.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

 **Epilogue: _Sarah vs. the Emptiness_**

* * *

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

 _Hollow Woman? (Part One):_

 _Muddlement_

* * *

This is the dead land  
This is cactus land  
Here the stone images  
Are raised, here they receive  
The supplication of a dead man's hand  
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this  
In death's other kingdom  
Waking alone  
At the hour when we are  
Trembling with tenderness  
Lips that would kiss  
Form prayers to broken stone.

\- T. S. Eliot, _Hollow Men_

* * *

I am standing outside of Langley, looking at the building. I am unsure why I am here, except that, for ten years, it centered my world. _Axis Mundi_ \- I believe that is the phrase. _How do I know that? Why do I keep coming up with phrases, images, pop culture references? Why did I think my taxi driver sounded like C3PO? I don't know who - what - C3PO_ is. _Do I?_

Anyway, Langley. _Axis Mundi_.

Graham was here, always here, in his office, pulling and cutting strings, puppets dancing and collapsing. I was his scissors. Snip, snip, snipe, snipe, _sniper._ Enforcer. Ice Queen. Edwina Scissorhands. _Huh?_

I remember all of that Graham stuff, Langley. I remember that it did not make me happy but that I could not seem to escape it. I could find no way out. But I am out now, _outside_ , but preparing to go in.

I did find a way out, but I don't _goddam_ remember how. I feel like two disconnected women, sharing one body, and life.

One woman, a laser-focused, unhappy CIA agent, alone, a loner. Agent Walker. A conscriptee into a bloody world that bloodied her and out of which she could find no exit. So she ground out a bloody life, trying not to let herself dwell on it, see it or feel it for what it was. She did find a way out for a baby. Mom has her still, I guess. I don't know. I haven't called. Ryker. I should ask Chuck, except that would require that I talk to Chuck...

The second woman, a woman with a memory like a whiffle ball, slotted and empty, unsure of herself or anyone around her, unstable, confused, hurt. Lost. So completely lost. In a maze, muddled. Me, now. _Sarah Blank_.

But in between, there is a third woman, Sarah Bartowski, married, a woman who has a home, who was leaving the CIA behind, a woman who was, I have been told, not just happy, but flourishing, thriving. Not alone, not a loner. _I believe what I have been told. I do._ A woman with a family, friends, her life a going concern...

But I cannot remember that woman, the woman-of-the-gap, Sarah Bartowski. I am the second woman, Sarah Blank the dregs of the first and third, their remnants, myself in _diaspora_.

I remember the woman I am now, Sarah Blank. Not much to remember. A few muddled weeks, and a long, aching pain I cannot lessen and cannot outrun, a pain that has only worsened as I distanced myself from Burbank, and neared DC, Langley.

 _Distanced me from Chuck. From my husband. 'Husband'_ : how can one word seem so natural and so unnatural?

The woman-of-the-gap is a gap, a wretched hollow in my heart and my mind, and I am a woman, the first, reaching out to herself, the second, across a fixed gulf, the third. I am all three women - and none.

I cross the street to the unwelcoming building and go inside. I have an appointment with the new Director, a woman, Sally Boosinger. I smile in spite of myself, a woman named Boo in charge of spooks. The world is a damned strange place, but funny, _in a razor-blade-in-your-ice-cream_ way. I do not remember Agent Walker finding anything funny in any way, not after she began Enforcing, but I see humor and irony now. I wonder when that started? It must be something Sarah Blank has inherited from Sarah Bartowski.

I go inside and submit to security, then I head toward Boosinger's office. As I walk, I wonder about my decision to leave Burbank.

The kiss did not work.

And it did.

Morgan's magical kiss. I did not remember and I did. I knew that I wanted Chuck Bartowski, and I knew somehow that the desire had a long history; I had felt it before; it had stability, reality, that desire. And urgency. I was tempted to take him right there on the beach, make love to him. And that scared me so much, I ran. All the way here.

Boosinger's assistant sees me coming, expects me. He gets up and, saying nothing to me, only nodding, he opens Boosinger's office door. Boosinger is standing behind her desk. Tall, thin, all angles. Her eyes brim with intelligence and...sympathy. She gestures to one of the chairs in front of the desk and I sit in it.

"Agent Bartowski, good to see you." Each word comes out carefully, especially my last name. And that is my last name. My driver's license says so, my credit cards, my passport. The law knows who I am even if I do not. "How was the trip?"

I shrug. Smile weakly. She nods in understanding and sits down herself. Before her, on the desk, is a huge file. Mine. She opens it, lifting the large stack of papers and leaving only a thin stack of a few. She reads. "I understand what has happened to you, at least in general and medical terms, Agent Bartowski, but I am unsure why you are here."

"Me too," I offer, not helpfully. "Returning to the scene of the crime, I guess."

Boosinger winces. She looks up at me. "Graham had no right, Agent. What he did to you was...well, criminal, I judge, certainly immoral. I assume he had leverage over you - your father?"

I nod. "Yes, and then…"

"And then you were too far in to see a way out?"

I shrug again but in agreement. "I guess I am here to see...about returning to the field."

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know I do not mean them. I am starting to get dizzy, to feel faint. I do not like it here. Langley. The dusty, cool tombs of Langley. The cold of DC. I am a California girl. But who is that I? Agent Walker? Sarah Bartowski? Sarah Blank? All. None of them wants to be here.

Boosinger can sense my reaction. The sympathy is again in her eyes. "Do you really want to go back into the field? Back into deep cover? It has been a long time. I have talked at some length with Beckman. She tells me you were done or were planning to be done, before…"

"I guess that's true. But I do not know what...else to do. I am nothing but a spy."

The words, the thought, is familiar. And wrong. Sarah Blank is not Agent Walker.

Boosinger leans back a bit in her chair. She picks up a pen from her desk and taps on my open file. "You are...you were...an Agent of remarkable skill, Sarah. But I have no leverage over you and want none. If you come back, it will have to be because this is the life you want, because you are re-committing to this life."

Boosinger is as smart as she looks. She went right for the word: commitment. She waits for a reaction. I give her none. I hold her stare. But I am contemplating commitments and the breaking of them. _For better or worse….In sickness and in health...Did Chuck and I say those words explicitly or were they left implicit? No less binding if they were._

 _Until I put us asunder._

She puts the pen down. "I have also talked with Charles….with Chuck." When I start to react, she puts out a hand, stilling me. " _I_ called him, not the other way around, Sarah. He knows you. He knows you better than anyone."

I cannot argue with that. He does. I know he does. That is part of the reason I am here. He knows me. No one has ever known me. I have never been known as I know - not until Chuck. I realized that I have told him about myself. Not everything, but a lot. I do not understand that. I have guarded that information jealousy, zealously, all my life. How did I come to tell him? Marry him? _I tried to kill him. I hurt him, beat him, and he let me. He took a bullet intended for me._ Agent Walker knows no one who would do that, knows no feeling that would cause it.

 _Except for the feeling during that kiss on the beach. That feeling of being known and somehow knowing despite unknowing, welcoming the complicated mutual knowledge, her immediate, consuming desire to re-establish it, the intimacy it betokened, revel in it, shed her inhibitions with her clothes._

 _Terrifying._

"What did my...what did Chuck say?"

Boosinger shrugs. "Quite a lot. That husband of yours is a remarkable man. If I were younger…"

She smiles at me. I smile back but I feel the heat of jealousy rise in my cheeks. Boosinger sees it and her smile grows wider. She turns her chair and produces a file from the table behind her, turns back with it in her hand. I catch a glimpse of a photograph of Chuck. It looks like the one Quinn showed me. The file is Chuck's. Boosinger opens it and flips through the pages.

"What the two of you did...the three of you, counting John Casey...four, counting Morgan Grimes...What you did was remarkable. The country is in your debt. You have done your part and more. You can walk away, Sarah. Maybe you should walk away…" She flips more pages. "Sarah, do you still love your husband?"

I open my mouth to say no but my very bones rebel. I cannot deny that. But I am not willing to affirm it. I sit there, saying nothing. I finally close my mouth.

"Sarah, I am reluctant to take you back - for your sake. Do you really remember nothing of your life in Burbank?"

I cannot say that I remember nothing. Bits and pieces keep coming back to me, random and jumbled, but always containing him, me, us. Feelings flash in me, burn bright, and then they go, untethered to any experience I recall but undeniably real. I am in love with a man I do not know but who I somehow know better than I know - better even than I knew - myself. He is the cornerstone of a life that Quinn stole from me. I killed Quinn for that, among other things. But I do not know that life, Sarah Bartowski's life. Sarah Blank is...blank.

"I remember pieces. Like parts of a jigsaw without the box cover, so I do not know what the final assembly is supposed to look like, what it is supposed to...be...Who I am...supposed to be."

"Is that a recommendation for an agent in the field?"

I slump in my chair. "No, I suppose...not."

"Your efforts to find Quinn, your stopping of him, all that suggests that you can still do the job. But I don't think your heart was ever in the job, was ever here, in Langley. I believe we both know where your heart is, Sarah. _Who_ your heart is."

She grows quiet and looks at me, waiting.

When I say nothing, she closes Chuck's file and hands it to me. "I am going to entrust this to you, Sarah. Beckman supplied much of it to me. She is willing for you to have it." She holds it out to me. I reach for it as if it were dangerous. That is how it feels to me. _I threatened to shoot Ellie. Chuck saw Agent Walker, the Enforcer. The killer. How can I be his wife after that?_

I take the file but make myself keep from looking at it.

Boosinger exhales slowly, still looking at me, still waiting. For something. "Do you really want to be a spy again, Sarah? Or do you want it because it is all you know, and because…"-she smiles at me tightly-"...because you want to _forget_ what you have forgotten? Bury yourself in work, danger, movement?"

Bury me. I recall Agent Walker's corpse dream. It has not come back. But I feel it there, on the edge of consciousness, pressing itself toward me, threatening a return. Although I do not remember, I am sure that Sarah Bartowski's sleep was untroubled by that dream. It tormented Agent Walker and Sarah Blank fears it.

"I don't know where else to go, Director." My voice breaks as I speak. "I have...nothing."

For the first time, Boosinger seems...annoyed. "I would say, Sarah, that you have...everything. Everything you ever really wanted."

She lets that pronouncement color the room, watching, waiting.

I cough out some words. "But I don't know...I don't know how to want what I want. I...I see it there. My hus...Chuck has offered it to me. He wants me, a life with me, not a replay of the life we had but a new one, just a life together…"

"Do you not believe him? Because, Sarah, I do."

"I do. I do." The form of words strikes me, wedding words, and I gasp at them, but then I go on. "But...but...I...I don't understand _why_...he wants that."

"You mean you don't understand why he wants _you_?"

I nod weakly. I do not understand that. I know what I am. I know what I was. I do not see a path from here or there to him, to a life with him, a non-spy life.

Boosinger shakes her head. "I believe you need time. Look around you, Sarah. Consider where you are. Consider this office and its previous office-holder. Can you really tell me you want to come back? Do you want me to arrange an apartment for you here? Start work on a new assignment? Head off to some dark, distant corner of the world? Is that what you really want? I am...unconvinced."

So am I. No, worse, I know it is not what I want. I do not know how to want what I want. But I have always been...good...at wanting what I do not want. _I am broken. Beyond salvage. The phrase makes me think of Chuck's mom, but I do not know why._ I finally shake my head, defeated.

"You have a huge backlog of leave, Sarah. Graham never gave you time off and you have had none, other than your...honeymoon...in all the time you have been in the CIA…" Boosinger does not call Graham a bastard, but her tone makes clear how she feels. "Why don't we compromise? Take some time. Go somewhere. Let the dust of all this settle some. If, after that, you want to come back, fine. We will work it out. If not, then...follow your heart."

I blink at her, at her phrasing. I can tell it is deliberate. The woman controls her words; she is deliberate. "You and Beckman - you worked this out before I came?"

Her grin is almost shy. "Yes, Sarah, I may have consulted with Beckman. She wants what is best for you, for...everyone. I have come to hold her in high regard. You are not the only one who changed because of...because of Team Bartowski."

I ponder all this for a moment. I do not like Langley. It does not feel like the center of my world. I know where the center is, but I do not know how to reclaim it. I have changed. Sarah Blank is not Agent Walker. She is not Sarah Bartowski. Maybe she is not even Sarah Blank.

I have to figure this out, I have to figure myself out. My mission.

"Okay." I stand.

"Once you have...settled...let me know where to find you. I won't share that information with...anyone unless you tell me, but it is possible that I will need to get in touch with you, or that someone will. And I will need to get your pay to you."

"I will let you know. I don't know myself, not right now."

Boosinger comes around the desk and extends her hand. I start to return Chuck's file, thinking that she wants it back. She shakes her head. "No, take that with you. I want to thank you, and wish you the best."

We shake hands. I leave Langley. I hail a cab. As it takes me away, I do not look back.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

I had a mission once, years ago, a quick, successful, _bloodless_ mission, that took me to the coast of Mexico, to Puerto Vallarta. I finished the mission quickly enough to have the rest of the day to myself. So I rented a car and drove to Sayulita. I spent the afternoon on the beach. I am finding that beaches are calling to me.

I decide that is where I will go. Sayulita.

I have plenty of money. For years I went directly from mission to mission. I rarely spent any of my salary and it has been collecting in my account for years. And, since I will be on paid leave, I will be getting paid while I am there. I realize, after checking, that I have nearly a year of leave available. There's also the money that Chuck and I have, but I will not touch that.

I board a plane. I use an alias. I do not want to be found until I have found some answers.

Seated, I close my eyes. I do not understand what I am doing exactly, what is driving me. I cannot pull myself together. Agent Walker, Sarah Bartowski, Sarah Blank. They all seem like covers. But none were, none are.

The plane lands and I find a decent but out-of-the-way hotel, not far from the beach but not on it. It is older, quaint. Comfortable. It is the kind of place Agent Walker would have chosen, except she would never have noticed it non-operational features. Quaint was mostly lost on Agent Walker. She was more interested in sightlines, exits, proximity to the target.

I take my suitcase to my room and unpack it before I realize what I am doing. I do not unpack. I do not settle. I live out of my suitcase.

* * *

No, Agent Walker lived out of her suitcase.

But Sarah Bartowski had a home. A closet. Pictures, knick-knacks, keepsakes, signs of belonging.

Sarah Blank has a suitcase but it does not seem remotely like her home. But Burbank did not either. Not exactly. She wanted to feel at home there, but she did not. She did not know how to be at home with her husband, in her apartment, in her life. Sarah Blank wanted to be Sarah Bartowski - but Sarah Bartowski was like a cover she could not pull off.

She did not understand how to do it.

Intellectually, she knew that was because it was not a cover and because she did not want to be Sarah Bartowski _as a cover_. She wanted to _be_ Sarah Bartowski. The thought of being Agent Walker cheered exactly as much as the cold prospect of Langley had cheered her.

Sarah had not been 'reset': her memories were more or less the same as those of Agent Walker from five years ago. But Agent Walker had been five years younger, unhappy in a different way that Sarah was now unhappy. She knew how to be a spy, and that was, to a degree, all that she knew. But that still did not make her Agent Walker. She was not sure she knew how to be a spy as Agent Walker had been a spy. She felt...different. She had been wrong to make Chuck think that she was Agent Walker, to try to make herself think that she was. But it had been the only path she could find while groping in the darkness. Boosinger had been right: Sarah had gone back to Langley - but out of habit and desperation, not desire.

The old automatisms - they were back, although not as strong as they had once been. One thing they never tell you about amnesia. _Like there's a class!_ If you've broken an old habit, it does not return just because you can't remember breaking it. But you remember being habituated, and that memory can mimic the habit, even lead you to reinstitute the habit, but the habit is not a memory. Habits are not lost and gained as memories are. Sarah had not been in deep cover in years, had not performed a termination in years - at least as far as she knew.

She had taken time, while she was chasing Quinn, to access information about herself and her team in Burbank (Beckman gave her access) and so she knew some of what they had done, the stunning successes. She knew she had become a different kind of spy while handling and then while partnered with Chuck.

Sarah Blank was not anyone in particular - she was unstable, unhappy, disintegrated.

Sarah needed to pull herself together.

She knew that she had always needed to do that, knew that her dad had pulled her apart and that Graham has made it worse, distanced her detached parts even further from one another.

But, although she could not remember it herself, she knew that she had pulled herself together in Burbank. She also knew because that she had helped Chuck pull himself together. They had been good for each other, made each other better. But how could she do that as Sarah Blank, as the wreckage of the woman she had become and the woman, the endarkened agent, she had been?

She sighed and put her suitcase in the closet.

There was still some daylight left, so she walked to the beach from the hotel. The tourist families that might have been in town had gone in, heading for a change of clothes and dinner.

The beach was sparsely and randomly dotted with people: a couple of stubborn fishermen, lines still in the water, a large woman stuffed in a tiny beach chair, reading a massive novel: _Infinite Jest._ Sarah noticed the title as she walked by.

Cruel irony. She felt like the butt of a massive joke, the universe's punchline, the object of infinite jest. A part of her rebelled against the thought, but before she could figure out why, a young couple walked by hand in hand, attracting her attention.

Sarah stopped as they passed her and she turned, watching them.

The sun was just going down and the sky was awash in red and orange and yellow above the glassy water. The young man put his arms around the young woman from behind and she leaned her head back onto his shoulder. She gestured to the sky and he looked, but only for a second - his eyes were reserved for her. The young woman noticed (she had turned her head to see his face) and smiled shyly at him.

The ache Sarah had been carrying since Burbank intensified.

She reached up and wiped her eyes. She should just go home, work this out. Figure it out with Chuck. But the thought was at once welcome - and frightening. He knew so much about her. And what if she ruined it all, ruined him, worse even than she already had?

* * *

Sarah left Chuck on the beach, their beach. An important place. The place where their story started, where Chuck told her their story, and where she put their story on hiatus.

 _Asunder._

She had told him the kiss did not work, and then she had told him she had to go. The look of hurt in his eyes went so deep Sarah nearly crumbled. She knew that she felt the same pain - but she only felt the loss, she did not really understand what she was losing, and that was the problem.

He knew. He knew her. He knew them. He knew what they had been, what they had. He knew what he was losing. The asymmetry made her dizzy. All those years as Agent Walker, she had been the one in the know, the one fully prepped, practiced, who had made lists, who knew the mission backward and forward and sideways ( _sideways was important, missions often went sideways_ ). She was ahead of the mark, the target. She knew what was operationally crucial and what optional. And now, she knew nothing, not in comparison to the man she had kissed.

 _The asymmetry makes me dizzy._

Or the kiss had. _It had_. She was so dizzy. That kiss: lost, losing, fully present only in her own lips, so moved by the man who kissed her, the deliciously intimate stranger whose taste filled her mind with a memory ( _?!_ ) - _am I crazy?_ \- of whiskey and ice cream. _Yes, yes, yes, yes._

She stumbled away in the sand. _No, no, no, no._

She heard Chuck start to say her name and then stop himself. He let her go.

 _Go, Sarah. Danger. No plan. You don't understand the mission._

* * *

Sarah sat down and watched the last of the sun's red glow disappear. But unlike the sun's glow, her ache did not disappear. The ache was still there, still intense.

She had left her phone in her room. She had a sudden desire to look at it. It had her life on it, or Sarah Bartowski's. Sarah had not looked at the pictures really, but she knew they were there.

She plodded back to her room and turned on the light. On the small desk were her phone and the file on Chuck that Boosinger had given her. She had not looked at it on the plane and still felt strangely unable to do it.

She picked up her phone and called up her gallery of pictures. She started through them one by one. Looking at each, she felt in the first moment as if she had stumbled upon pictures of her happy identical twin - pictures of someone who looked exactly like her, like Sarah Blank - but who was not her. But that was not her complete experience. Each photograph eventually evoked a sense of _déjà vu_ , or something oddly like it. Normally, that was the experience of feeling as if you remembered something that you knew had _not_ happened to you before. Sarah's sense was the experience of feeling as if she _almost_ remembered something that had happened before…

However that was to be explained, the pictures did feel - vaguely, remotely but undeniably - like pictures of her, not just of pictures of a look-alike. She did not remember and she did. She knew they were pictures of her: and she could almost ( _almost!_ ) re-inhabit them.

Eventually, she put the phone down. It was maddening. Perhaps the worst thing was that there were so many photos of her and Chuck together, happily together, obviously in love. Sarah and Chuck. Sarah and Chuck Bartowski. She could not look at the pictures without feeling something. But did she feel love? Was that the source of the ache. She could not deny that she felt something. She could not deny that it was love. But she would not affirm it either. She just ached. The pictures helped and hurt, framed the ache while also sharpening its edge.

She had no idea what to do with herself.

After a while, she fell asleep fully clothed on the bed.

* * *

She found herself on the beach again early the next morning. She had brought a bag with her - towel, sunscreen, sunglasses, a book, Chuck's file. Finding a place to her liking, she settled down. She had grabbed a piece of fruit and a chocolate croissant at the hotel and had a couple of cups of coffee. Despite the odd feeling looking at her pictures had given her, Sarah slept more soundly that night than any night except the ones she spent with Chuck immediately after Quinn sent her to him. Even though she then believed he was her mark, and that she was in a long term seduction that involved having sex with her mark.

Sarah should have known that something was _wrong_ , that Quinn was _lying_. But she had 'awakened' feeling so strange, so much like and so much unlike the Sarah she remembered being, that she was unmoored, bewildered. Agent Walker was many things, but government-paid prostitute was never one of them. But it was all so bizarre, all so completely upside-down, that she did not know what to believe, and Quinn had seemed convincing, claiming that Chuck was responsible for Bryce's death and Graham's. As Quinn had planned, it had all overwhelmed her and she went along with it, because, sadly, she found it easier to believe she had crossed that line than to believe she was actually a happily married woman living in Burbank. Quinn had banked on the fact that the truth about Sarah would seem stranger than fiction to her, and he had been right. _Son of a bitch._ But she should have known she could not have slept alongside Chuck so peacefully if he was to her what Quinn said. Yes, she had refused the comfort of Chuck's warm feet for her cold ones, but as soon as she went to sleep, she must have cuddled against him, because she woke up early, before he did, to find them entangled with each other, the entanglement feeling...natural, desirable. And then she had panicked and rolled away, out of bed, back into Quinn's lie.

ooOoo

Sarah looked out at the water. _Why am I here? Why go to a beach? Why did I go to our beach when I said I needed to find myself?_

ooOoo

She knew that part of what was keeping her from her husband - and from her family and friends - was profound shame ( _there is no other term for it_ ) that sank and drowned her every time she remembered how coldly and hatefully she treated him and them (and that was every time she saw him, them). She had threatened to kill Ellie, forced Ellie into choosing to wreck a car over allowing Sarah to try to kill Chuck.

 _I called Chuck 'Bartowski', the look on his face!_

What woman - even what amnesiac woman - could be so poisonous, so twisted, that she would do such things to people she loved? Hadn't they understood that they had at long last seen the real Sarah, Agent Walker, the killer, the Enforcer, the Ice Queen? The loveless woman incapable of real love?

How could Chuck welcome such a...monster, bloody and blank, back into his home, contemplate a family with a brutal, soulless assassin?

Adding to the misery of such questions was another fact: for all the years she had been Agent Walker, she had kept herself hidden _from herself_ , developed elaborate stratagems, ruses, diversions, indirections and, especially automatisms - all to keep herself from herself, to keep herself from having to reckon with what she had become under Graham's misguiding hand. She had faced herself only in distorting mirrors or in the dark or around corners: never squared up and stared at herself in good earnest. But now she had.

Losing her memory forced the confrontation.

Coming back to Agent Walker in that way after the intervening years, even though she could not recall the intervening years, was like being forced to don old clothes, ill-fitting, foul-smelling and, above all, blood-stained. She was forced to see Agent Walker, herself, for what she was, to face what she had become.

She knew she had faced herself with Chuck, while in Burbank. When they were hunting Quinn together, it quickly became clear that he knew things about her that she had, so far as she could remember, never told anyone. It was weirdly like he was telepathic. But he was not reading her thoughts, He was telling her what _she_ told him although she had no memory of telling him. She asked him how he knew - her cheeks burned at the recollection of the tone she had used, the accusatory tone - and he told her honestly that she did, she told him. She believed him even if it seemed incredible. He did not elaborate since he could see her panic, but he did tell her that she had been slowly telling him the story of her life, a sequence of such stories, stories about who she had been and what she had done. He did not know everything, not by a longshot, he said, but he knew...some things.

But that facing of Agent Walker had been the work of Sarah Bartowski, done over time, done with support. This time Sarah was facing Agent Walker as Sarah Blank, and that was very different. She was alone and that earlier life had come on her immediately, entire, no time to dole it out into manageable portions, bite-sized chunks of darkness.

Because the truth was that she not only could remember being Agent Walker, but it was like those memories had crashed over her, rushed back, raw, and painful, and in grisly technicolor, almost as if she had never really remembered them before. And, she supposed, she really had not remembered them before (not that she could remember, anyway), owned them, never fully or honestly except as muted, distanced, the technicolor desaturated, the grisly diminished. She had farmed _(Farmed?_ ) them out to her covers, treated the cover identity as the agency of the relevant action _(Agent, Agency_?). It was her CIA-perfected version of a mental trick her dad taught her long ago for ignoring the real consequences of conning, both for those conned and those conning.

Sarah sat still, staring absently at the water as it rolled in, rolled away, leaving a wreath of foam at the nearest edge of its approach. After a long moment, she shook her head, trying to clear her mind of the wreath of foam, vestiges of thoughts mixed with feelings, left at the nearest edge of their approach.

ooOoo

Sarah dug the sunscreen out of her bag and lathered it on the areas left exposed by her beach wrap. She took the wrap off and began to put sunscreen on the rest of her, whatever was exposed by the one piece she wore but had been hidden by the wrap. She was just beginning to soak in the warming morning sun when she felt a shadow fall across her. _I am in someone's shadow._

She looked up, expecting and prepared to rebuff a come-on from some random man. _I am a married woman!_

- _Huh. I am. I really am. What am I going to do about it?_

But the shadow was a woman's shadow.

The shadow of Frost.

* * *

 **A/N2** And we are off on our final story together. Things will begin to take a more definite shape next chapter. I am repositioning my pieces. Tune in next time for Chapter 56, "Hollow Woman? (Part Two): Beach Foam".

I am firmly convinced that it makes little sense to believe that what Quinn does to Sarah _resets_ her to Agent Walker. (That's why I scare-quoted the word when I used it before.) She believes it for a while, yes, but her belief is false. She is no longer Agent Walker and is not even psychologically continuous with her. Much of this story is predicated on that conviction.

The Finale. Speaking of firm convictions, I am also firmly convinced that there was nothing in the 'inner logic' of the show that required the finale. In that way, the S5 finale differs from the Slough of Despond in S3. Chuck and Sarah had issues to sort in S3, and that something dramatic and unpleasant was going to be required to get them to face them. They were either going to have to face those issues or give up on each other. _High stakes_.

(I am not defending the specific way that got done, but it needed doing in some way. Sarah had to find her way past satisfaction with half-measures, half-realities, and Chuck had to find his way past his persistent passivity and past _his_ fantasies of _her_ spy life. (Throughout the show, Chuck makes assumption after assumption about how great Sarah's spy life was ('glamorous', 'exciting', 'wild'), and those assumptions are never confirmed by her, and what we learn of her history tends almost always to disconfirm them. She fears a normal life, but a normal life is not a loser in pairwise comparison with the spy life for her; she never suggests that it is. That is Carina, not Sarah. Chuck (and viewers) sometimes confuse them. But as I said in a previous A/N, the two women have different ways of being-in-the-spy-world.))

There are no comparable stakes at issue in the finale. It was done...well, _I don't know why_. But I am stuck with it, so here we are. Anyway, if you are interested in further thoughts on the finale, you can find them in the late chapters of my book on the show.


	56. Hollow Woman? (Two)

**A/N1** Another chapter. We are rolling along to our conclusion.

There have been a number of songs that have mattered to this story: Josh Ritter's _Girl in the War;_ Sheryl Crow's _Strong Enough;_ The Pretenders, _Back on the Chain Gang_. The Future Islands song that provides our epigraph here is the song of the Epilogue.

A chapter of conversation, sometimes difficult.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

 _Hollow Woman? (Part Two)_ :

 _Beach Foam_

* * *

Standing on a shore somewhere  
Looking for something to be  
As the beach rolls in, I swear  
It's bringing something to me

Baby, one day I'll have what I want  
Baby, one day I'll follow the stream  
But until then I'll just wait and watch  
As the pull rolls into me

Beach foam, baby  
Midnight, baby  
Beach foam, beach foam, baby  
Midnight, baby, midnight, baby  
Midnight

-Future Islands, _Beach Foam_

* * *

When I recognize Frost, I almost jump.

"Sarah."

"Mary."

We look at each other for a long moment, each trying to gauge the other, intentions, motives.

I know her. I _know_ her. I feel it. She is not someone who has been introduced to me as my mother-in-law. No, I know her. I feel a connection with her. As I look at her, I realize there is a sadness, a hollowness, in her eyes that must reflect what she sees in mine.

I notice that she has sunglasses in her hand. She must have taken them off to meet me. To allow me to see her eyes, even knowing what I would see there. I make myself bear up under the intensity of her gaze. Finally, just as I feel compelled to look away, just as shame about what I have done - and almost did - to her children wells up in me, like burning bile, she puts her sunglasses back on and sits down beside me. I realize she is barefoot.

We look out at the water and then both begin to contemplate the beach foam near our feet. Silence. A long silence, neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, populated by other voices, gull cries, the slow, slewing sound of the water.

A cloud passes overhead, shading us both. The reduced light provokes Frost to speak, or so it seems: "I have come to rescue you. To take you home, Sarah. I am not leaving without you."

I have that sense of _almost déjà vu_ again, like her words are words I have somehow inhabited.

She turns to me, and I see my own befuddled look in the dark lenses of her sunglasses. She smiles at me, that peculiar warm-cold smile of hers.

"You remember the words, maybe a little? They are basically yours to me when you came to rescue me from Volkoff. A fool's errand, Sarah, but one for which I am forever in your debt."

I don't remember, but I did read something about this in the Team B information Beckman gave me, so I know it happened. I know I went into deep cover to rescue Frost from Volkoff. I also know that I nearly lost myself in doing it, nearly lost Chuck. Neither item was recorded as such in the post-mission paperwork I saw (in my own handwriting) but it was all there between the lines. When I read it, I could recall nothing.

But now, after Chuck's kiss and after Frost's appearance, I feel like maybe I do, almost. Something is there, something...memorial...just on the edge of consciousness... _Me in dark garb_? _Dyed?_

I lose the darkling thread of memory. Still seeing my reflection in her sunglasses, but now trying to ignore it, I give her a rueful smile. "Thanks, Mary. But you...How do you know this isn't a fool's errand, Mary?"

She turns away from me and back to the water. Another long silence. We are women of silence, I realize, partly by nature, partly by…' _nurture'_ does not seem to be the right word, but some unwholesome antonym would do...I just can't conjure one for myself. 'Mis-nurture'? Not a word, I guess.

Mary speaks without turning back to me. The shadow of the cloud passes. "Because my son is a genuinely good man, and he is so in love with you. And I do not believe such love from such a man could be a...mistake...inappropriate, be directed toward a woman unworthy of it. But I also know you would be worthy of it even if you did not have it. I know you, Sarah."

A beat of silence. "That makes one of us."

Frost gives me a rueful smile. "You don't know enough about yourself; I know too much about myself." Her smile slowly passes. "Why aren't you at home, Sarah, with Chuck? Why are we sitting on a beach in Mexico?"

I dodge. "How did you find me, Mary?"

"Spy. Remember."

I give her a flat glance and she winces. "Sorry, but you do - _remember_ that, right?"

I nod but also shrug. "Sort of. I know it, anyway."

She changes topic subtly, staring out at the water. "Spying, the life. It's the ruin of a person, Sarah. We were not made to be deceivers, even if it possible for us. Lying by itself would be bad enough and destructive enough, but the taking of life...I did some of that too, Sarah...and other things. I…"

My glance softens. I feel her; I understand. "The only way to...hang on…."

"...Is to become a self-deceiver."

She knows. I nod once. She sees it. It is enough.

After a moment, I add: "But you can't deceive yourself into the truth. You just compound the lies, offer yourself excuses, find ways to deny or deflect or deter...any reckoning with it all. But the strategies you develop to stay...decent...nearly human…"

Frost picks up the thought: "...Misfit you for the life you want to have…"

Silence.

"It doesn't help," Frost finally adds, "to tell yourself the 'noble lies', Greater Good, protection of the innocent...Even if they were true - and mostly they aren't - they can't prevent your ruination. Doing something for a good reason doesn't mean that doing it won't destroy you."

I had not expected a heavy talk about spying while slathered in sunscreen. The morning is getting warmer slowly, the sunlight more intense, almost white. I envy Frost's dark glasses.

I offer Frost my sunscreen, but she shakes her head.

"Why are you here, Sarah? Chuck is...miserable, lost. My son needs his wife. He doesn't need to be...abandoned...again. Alone in Burbank."

I have dodged it once; Frost will not allow me a second, I know. I reach down and grab a handful of sand. I hold it toward her and we watch it run out of my tightening fist.

"I can't get ahold of myself, Mary; I don't know how to be Chuck's wife."

She smirks, huffs. "You didn't on the day you married him, either, but, as I recall, that sure as hell didn't stop you. Nothing was going to stop you. Ellie told me you said you would have married Chuck if you'd had to be rolled down the aisle on a gurney…"

I giggle, then put my hand over my mouth. That has been happening increasingly, giggles, humor, irony. _I'm not funny. Or maybe I am._ Mary smiles at me. "You love him, Sarah. What has happened to you hasn't changed that, I believe. And you know it."

 _Swerve, Sarah._ "But what I did to Chuck, to Ellie, what I threatened to do, was prepared to do…"

Frost reaches out to put her hand on my arm and she squeezes it. "You don't know what you were prepared to do, Sarah. You know what you believe the old you would have been prepared to do. But did you do what the old you would have done at any point in all of that Quinn madness?"

I consider the question. I have been so focused on my sins of commission, I have not even asked myself about omissions - sins or otherwise. I reflect on what I did not do. Mary is right. Over and over I chose not to do what Agent Walker would have done in the same circumstances. Even when I believed I was her, I was not her.

"Okay, Mary...I grant that. But I am so...so very…"

"Ashamed?" I see my reaction to her question in her dark lenses. Shock.

"Yes," I confess, after a long painful moment.

"I know. Me too. I started spying again because I was...ashamed. I still can't face my kids. It's not just that I left them, abandoned them, though, God knows, that is awful, but there's also...Volkoff... _the fact of him_. I have wanted to talk to Chuck and Ellie but I can't." Frost takes off her sunglasses for a moment and rubs the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut. She puts the sunglasses back on.

"Hartley Winterbottom, the man who...became...Volkoff, Agent X, was Stephen's good friend." I nod. I read about this too. "He was my friend too. But he wasn't just my friend, not on his end. He was also in love with me. I was completely in love with Stephen; I did not reciprocate Harley's feelings, and he never even told me that he had them, I just knew he did. He was a perfect gentleman. He never let his feelings for me discolor his relationship with Stephen." Frost digs her toes in the sand, burying her feet.

"When the project went...wrong, and Hartley's mind destabilized under the pressure of the Volkoff identity, the CIA wanted the problem... _solved_." She gave me a look: termination. "I was chosen; I volunteered; it was a little of both. Stephen and I were both wracked with guilt about what had happened to our friend. I did not _want_ to leave home, leave Stephen and the kids, but I felt like it was our responsibility, not just as part of the CIA project, but as Hartley's friends. And I couldn't let someone else take the...assignment. I accepted the infiltration mission and left believing that I could make it right and could bring Hartley home and return home.

She stops for a moment, looks down at her ankles and her now invisible feet. "You know that my belief turned out to be false, right?" I know the story from Beckman's files. I know that I could see as I read that I had...omitted...certain things in my report. She glances at me, then resumes.

"It took me time to even get to Hartley. I was not prepared for the speed and cleverness and cruelty of Volkoff and how fast he could begin to construct an empire. By the time I...climbed the ladder to reach him, he was deeply embedded in Volkoff's life, surrounded by guards, weapons, assassins, already in control of a vast network, and still growing. The CIA had given me the green light to terminate him. They wanted him off the books, wanted to wash their hands of the whole affair. But I did not want to do that, and I knew it would crush Stephen. So, when I reached Volkoff, my hope was to somehow extract him.

"What I had not expected was the strange effect the mixture of identities would have on him. Volkoff was immediately attracted to me, telling me early on that he felt like he had known me for years. He thought it romantic nonsense; I thought it was something else: I was almost certain that Hartley's memories and feelings were influencing Volkoff at a deep level, not quite conscious, not quite subconscious." She frowns at her memories.

"I quickly found out that I was right, Hartley was influencing Volkoff - except when Volkoff was angry or deeply emotional, then the Hartley influence seemed to be overwritten and gone. Hartley had wanted me, but knew that he could not have me - and he had accepted that. Volkoff wanted me and did not know he could not have me, did not accept it. Hartley's resignation affected him. Volkoff kept pushing me, kept trying to start something between us and I kept resisting. He kept failing to be able to...follow through. It was an uneasy standoff, but as it went on I gradually became crucial to Volkoff in other ways. I could not kill him or extract him, but I could...after a fashion...control him. If I kept him preoccupied and cheerful, he was pliant: I could talk him down from his worst impulses or at least curb them. But that meant that when Volkoff wanted me - when he was angry or deeply emotional - I was stuck there, in arm's reach. Eventually, he got angry enough and he... _took me_."

I reach out and grab her arm. Reflex. _Fondness_. She gives me an inscrutable look that melts into pain. "No, Sarah. To this day, I do not know if I exactly consented to what happened or not. I guess I did. I had been there a long time; I was willing to do whatever I could to try to save Hartley. In some sense it was Hartley. I mean...I didn't do it out of desire, I didn't want him, either of them. I wanted...God, help me, I still want...Stephen.

"But I also wanted the mission to succeed. I did not want to terminate Volkoff - for Hartley's sake but also for mine and my family's. The odds were against me ever getting out of there alive if I terminated him. So, I did it, or let it happen, or some of both. And, no matter what I tell myself about my intentions, my motives...I cannot forgive myself. Because I kept doing it when I had to. Most of the time, Hartley's influence made Volkoff...unable to perform. I could sleep...unmolested. But not every time."

"How do I tell Chuck and Ellie that story, Sarah? That their mother abandoned them only to take up a station alongside a killer - and sometimes...beneath...him? That I cheated on my husband, their father? Because, whatever the story, whether there is an excuse or not" - Frost's face suggested that there was not - "that is what I did."

I have completely forgotten my forgetting. Frost's story holds me captive. I do not remember my time with Frost in Russia, no scenes of it come to mind, but something about her pain seems familiar, and at one point in the story I do remember her face - not in Russia, but as I saw it when I walked down the aisle to marry Chuck. The sadness in it, despite her happiness for us.

Frost drops her head, tears appear from behind her sunglasses and wend down her grimacing face. Loosening my grip, I rub the arm I am still holding. "Mary, the question is whether they will forgive you. I may not remember, but I _know_ this: they will forgive you."

She nods, takes off her sunglasses and wipes her eyes, her cheeks. "But they won't forgive _you_ , Sarah?"

I gasp - captured by my own words, my own conviction. Yes, they will forgive me. Chuck already has.

I sit in the light of that realization for a moment.

But then I focus again on Frost. "You can't keep carrying this burden around, Mary. Let yourself be forgiven." I realize that I have an insight to share, one about emotions. _Odd_. _I do not understand emotions. Do I?_ "Because you can't forgive yourself, you won't let anyone else forgive you. Their unforgiveness is an additional misery you are choosing as a form of self-punishment."

She looks at me again, surprised and thoughtful. "And you, your unwillingness to forgive yourself and go home to Chuck? That's not a form of self-punishment?"

Convicted by my own words, I can only mutter weakly. "But I don't know my husband. How can I love a man I don't know?"

Frost has recovered a bit from her story. She frowns at me aggressively. "I know something about your history with Chuck, Sarah. He's told me a little. Ellie more. Casey the most." I feel my eyes widen but she does not explain. "What I know is that Chuck fell in love with you, found you worthy of loving, even when he knew almost nothing about your past. Isn't that true?"

"Yes…But he said he didn't have to know my past to know me."

Frost smiles with a bulls-eye smile. "But _you_ have to know his past to know _him_? Do you have to know your past together to know you _belong together_? You asked Chuck to trust you. He did. He does. Why don't you try trusting you?"

I just sit there. "But, Mary, it isn't that simple..."

"Oh, so it's _complicated_?"

"But what if I never remember?"

"Then you get to rediscover your husband. I wish I had that chance, Sarah…"

We again sit in silence, together alone with our thoughts.

I stand, dust sand off my bottom, and walk out toward the water, stopping to kick half-heartedly at a garland of beach foam. The sun is glaring, the water glinting.

From behind me, Mary speaks softly. "Don't let the spy life reclaim you, Sarah. Take my son and get out. This isn't a choice between family and career, a white picket fence and Langley: it's a choice between life and a kind of death. You and Chuck can make your own future, even if you don't remember your past."

I turn to look at her. She still has her sunglasses in her hand. Her eyes are Chuck's eyes.

 _I guess his are hers._

 _I love you, Chuck. The edge of the world. My words._

"Do you still love my son, Sarah?"

I cannot lie to those eyes, and I cannot dodge, swerve. "Yes. But I don't know what to do about it."

 _Mission log_.

I realize I have had this problem before.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for Chapter 57, "Memory Lane".

One of the deep, constant challenges of MisEd is keeping due proportion between Sarah's intelligence and her bewilderment, her self-knowledge and her failures of self-acknowledgement. Portraying those with the right degree of lucidity has taxed me. The trick, or an important part of it, is to portray her confusions without confusing the reader, to render muddlement without creating it (all the while holding onto a bit of mystery).

Thoughts?

Z


	57. Hollow Woman? (Three)

**A/N1** Just a few chapters to go.

Thanks for your thoughts. I would love to hear from you.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (MIs)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

 _Hollow Woman? (Part Three)_

 _Memory Lane_

* * *

There's no home  
No home like the one I found in you  
Now you're running away  
Oh to feel like a child again...

And the song he sings, he brings to life for you  
It's all for you  
It's all for you.

And I'm haunted by you  
I'm haunted by you

Every song I sing, it brings me back to you

I'm haunted by you  
I'm haunted by you  
I'm haunted by you...

\- Future Islands, _Haunted By You_

* * *

I turned and walked away from Frost, walked into the water. I kept going until it was past my knees, then I stopped and stood, allowing the waves to break against my legs. My thoughts were coming in waves too.

I was remembering, drip, drop, drip. One small item at a time - a phrase, a taste, a name, a face. On that awful night in the courtyard, when I left Chuck to chase Quinn, I told him that I believed him but did not feel it. I had not lied. But I had spoken falsely, I now knew. I felt something, but I did not believe it. In particular, I did not believe it could be what it was: love. I took my sadness and panic to be about my loss of myself, my loss of what Quinn had stolen from me. I was sad and panicked about that, but more, I was sad and panicked about walking away from Chuck. My Chuck. My guy. Running from him, chasing Quinn but running from Chuck.

Then I turned around and did it again after the beach, after he told me our story, after that kiss.

I ran from an earlier kiss too, although I ran into the emotional distance, not the physical distance: the kiss in front of the Bryce bomb. (Mission log.) Chuck's kisses are powerful things for me, obviously. I let my mind linger on that kiss on the beach, on the way I melted before I froze and ran.

Melted. Solid to liquid, ice to water.

Running water.

Water. I realize I have been standing, staring out at the horizon for a while. I turn and see Frost stand, brush herself off. She looks at me. I wade back toward her, out of the water. She is waiting for me to say something more. I get my towel and dry my legs, then I gather my things and look at her. "Lunch?"

She agrees. She seems content to keep waiting.

We walk off the beach, stopping at the edge of the sand to collect her shoes, and then back toward my hotel. There is a place next door to eat, standard local fare. I ask Frost if she could get a table while I run upstairs to change. I have felt men's eyes on me all the way back, even with my wrap on. She goes into the restaurant and I head upstairs, the old, cranky elevator jerking back and forth as it climbs, a little up, a little down. When the elevator finally arrives on my floor, I step off and then notice that I am humming.

Humming. I do not hum. But I am. And then I realize I am humming a... _Devo song_. The words come to me, an offbeat miracle:

You got me lookin' up high  
You got me searchin' down low  
You got me, I know you know  
You got me jerkin' back 'n' forth

 _How do I know_ of _Devo? Much less know a Devo tune?_

And before I can reckon with the questions, I have two sudden, intense memories, the first blending imperceptibly into the second. I am watching Chuck dance to the song in his room, feeling both amused and aroused and frustrated….and then I am in a small room with strangely insulated walls and I am making love to Chuck as the song plays, moving up and down languorously in Chuck's lap, humming into his ear along with the chorus, deliriously excited, deliriously happy, lost in slow-motion desire, surrounded by sound...

 _I-Jodi_. The term pops into my mind but I do not understand. _Apple device?_ The memories make me spin.

Reeling, I steady myself against the frame of my room's door. And then I notice. The door is not completely closed. But I closed and locked it before I left. I know I did; I made a point of it. I have no weapon on me, I suddenly realize. _Odder and odder._ But I do have tennis shoes on my feet, laced but untied. I bend down quickly, putting the bag beside the door, and I unlace one shoe. I take the lace and wrap one end around my left hand and the other around my right. I pull it hard; it does not break. I slip off the other shoe and put it in the bag, then I push the door open, and rush into the room almost like a sprinter in a race, starting in a crouch and rising as I go through the door.

I see someone leaning over my bed. I launch myself onto the person's back, lassoing the person's head with my arms and the shoelace, pulling it back hard by means of my weight against the person's throat.

I hear a strangled cry: "Stop, Bartowski!" I freeze. The voice I know. The name I know. It is the first time it has sounded like mine.

ooOoo

I release her. _Carina_. I step back, the shoelace now dangling limply from my left hand. She looks at me, hurt and fury in her eyes. "Damn, Bartowski, what is the deal?'

I look past her to the bed. On it is a violin case. I look back up at Carina. It takes a moment, but we both shake off the near-violence.

"Carina, what are you doing here? How did you find me/"

She smirks. "I called the hubby, Chuckles. He told me a little about your leaky head." The smirk vanishes and a smile of sympathy takes its place. "And, I am so sorry, Sarah."

"How did Chuck know where I am?"

"Your phone. It is routed through a satellite you two evidently own. You've come up in the world, Bartowski."

I realize that I have half-known this all along. I never did anything to make my phone invisible to Chuck. My use of the alias on the flight notwithstanding, I realize I was never serious about hiding from him. The alias was more about hiding my intentions from me, my real intentions to be found. Maybe Frost found me the same way?

"How is...he? How's Chuck?"

She gives me a hard look, not particularly friendly, although her earlier sympathy does not simply vanish. "How do you think? He's a walking heart-removal patient. He misses you so bad I could feel it on the phone."

I gesture at the violin case, trying not to reflect on her words. "Is that why you are here?"

Carina turns at the waist, looks at it and looks back. "No, not really. Two birds, one stone. I wanted to give it to you, but the reason I am here is that I have a mission...sort of."

I don't know what that means, and I will get to it, but I walk past Carina to the bed. I recognize the case. The violin I had in Leipzig. The one I left in Russia, the one Donald Melden ferried from Leipzig to Russia for me.

I open the case. The violin looks like it is still in good condition, surprisingly good. I turn to Carina. "How did you get this?"

"A little while after your wedding I ran into that guy, Donald Melden, in DC. He asked me about you. He seemed incredibly happy when I told him about you, Chuck, the wedding. The next day an envelope showed up with a key to a locker in Moscow and a note saying it belonged to you, and asking me to give the key to you in case you had lost yours or forgotten about the violin. By chance, I got sent to Moscow a few weeks after that and thought to take the key. I went and found this. I had a music shop in DC recondition it. They say it's good-to-go."

I reach into the case and pluck a string. It sounds out, bell-like, pure. "I came up to change, Carina. Chuck's mom - Frost - is waiting at the restaurant downstairs. Do you have time for lunch? Then we can talk about the...sort of mission?"

Carina grinned. "The monster-in-law?" She shrugs. "I could eat."

I ask Carina to retrieve my bag from the hallway. I shower quickly and get dressed. We head downstairs and over to the restaurant. Frost is sitting at a table in the corner, back to the wall, a frosty mug of beer in front of her. She manages to control her surprise at seeing Carina - they must have met at the wedding - but I notice and so does Carina. Frost gestures for us to sit. The day has become stiflingly hot. Frost gestures at her beer and Carina and I both nod. She holds up two fingers at the waiter, who is leaning against the bar, staring at the three of us.

"Carina. I guess it is a day for Sarah to endure visitations. Hauntings. Kind of like a daylight Scrooge." Mary snickers at her own joke. It is a strange sight.

Carina laughs at Mary's remark and the absurdity of the whole situation. "Something like that. I had to bring something to her, but mainly I need her help." Frost quirked an eyebrow but did not ask for an explanation. The waiter brought the beers for me and Carina. We each ordered the special - it was on a chalkboard near our seat, and he left.

Carina: "I was just telling Sarah here that I ran into an old friend of hers. Donald Melden."

Frost's eyes light up a little. "Oh, Donald. Yes, I know him. He and I worked together - we were actually partners, back in the early days. Not for long. A couple of missions, I believe. But we got on well and might have been a good long-term team, but it didn't happen. I got the assignment with Stephen next…" Frost's voice thickened.

I step in. "Donald was...a friend to me back before Burbank."

"I didn't know we had him in common. He was a...different kind of spy. I'm not sure he would have had a career if Graham hadn't been his buddy." Frost shrugged. "I liked him."

"Me too," I add. Carina is nodding.

"So, Carina," Frost asks in the overlong silence that follows, "have you been busy since the wedding?"

She gets a funny look on her face. "No, not so much. A couple of missions. But, not long after the wedding, I asked my boss at the DEA to find something for me to do other than the deep cover stuff. The idiot up and promoted me, and so now I am running deep cover missions but no longer on them. I've traveled, but just to make arrangements, follow-up on assignments. I haven't really been in the field." Carina glances at me - and I know my mouth is hanging open. "But I do like the new job…"

She does not seem to want to continue, so she turns the conversation in another direction. "So, Sarah, can you tell me what happened? Chuck did not really elaborate. He said you would tell me if you wanted me to know the details."

I feel the absence of Chuck from my head to my feet. Carina's description: ' _heart-removal patient_ ' finally hits home. I choke back emotion and tell Carina what I can, the early parts of the story not really mine to tell as memories, but I know _of_ what happened to me. She listens without speaking, just occasionally shaking her head in disbelief.

I try to focus on the story and not on missing Chuck ( _How can I miss a man I don't know? I miss the man I love, known or unknown…_ ) I keep the story quick, economical. Frost offers a couple of details as we near the end. When I finish, Carina wipes her eyes. I had not noticed the tears and again I feel surprised.

Our meals come and we eat in the aftermath of the story, none of us sure what to say. I am still processing the revelations from my conversation on the beach with Frost and trying to make myself believe Carina is here too.

As we finish, Carina offers a comment. "I tried to contact Zondra, but she has evidently gone dark, into deep cover. I can't reach her." I had toyed with the idea of calling Carina and of calling Zondra, but the whole situation just...overwhelmed me. But now I am beginning to feel less overwhelmed. Steadier. The panic that has gripped me in one form or another since I 'woke' in my Burbank apartment seems to be going out, like the tide, taking the beach foam with it.

I feel clearer than I have in weeks. Not ready to make a decision, perhaps, but heading in that direction. I don't remember, but I am remembering. I had told Boosinger I was trying to assemble a puzzle without the picture box top. I still do not have the picture, exactly, but I am increasingly sure I have a sense of how the puzzle is to go together, even if I have to accept that the resulting picture will be...a surprise.

"So, Carina, you said something about needing me - for a mission?"

Carina looks up at me and then looks at Frost and she... _blushes_. Beet-red, redder-than-her-hair blushes. I gape at her. I did not know such a blush was possible for her.

"Um...yeah...Um…" She struggles to speak for a moment, her tongue uncooperative. She glances again at Frost. Then she takes a breath and grasps the table top with one hand.

"Only Sarah knows that I was...married...before I became I joined the DEA. College sweetheart. Thought I was cheating on him. Another woman convinced him and then claimed him for herself. Bruce - that's his name."

I jerk. I have a vision of Chuck across a table from me, food on it like the food we've just eaten, a smile on his face, as I tell him about my previous boyfriend, Bruce...Bryce. Bruce. I look at Carina.

" _Bruce_ , really?"

She nods a trace of her blush returning. I go on, thinking of her use of 'Chuckles' earlier. "And you give me a hard time about _Chuck_?" And then another memory. Chuck saying almost those words to me in the same place. Our first date. I was lying to him and I so did not want to lie to him.

Carina looks at me closely. So does Frost. But I offer no more. Carina clears her throat and goes on.

"So, I may have...been keeping tabs on Bruce...for a while. And I have reason to believe...that woman...he never married her…" - a small note of triumph in Carina's tone - "is part of a corrupt group in their firm, a group laundering money for drug lords. I can't convince the DEA, and I don't want them to think I am compromised, but I am afraid for Bruce. I don't think he is involved, but it looks like he is…I need help. I need to prove she's...dirty and he's not. Not that he didn't use to be," Carina said, a smile of recollected satisfaction on her face, "but that was a different sense of 'dirty'."

Frost looks at me. Then she looks at Carina. "If Sarah's in, I'm in. I don't plan to let my daughter-in-law out of my sight until we are on the ground in Burbank."

Carina grins at Frost. "I'm happy to help keep an eye on her." She turns the grin on me. "Blondie needs her Chucky, even if she's too tight-assed to admit it, or can't remember."

She picks up her mug and aims a toast at me. I feel strangely at peace with the entire plan, including the return trip to Burbank. I am not sure I will go when the time comes. I am not sure I will not go when the time comes. I miss my husband. I pick up my mug and Frost does hers too, and we clunk the three together.

"One for all and all for one," Carina offers with a smirk just before she gulps down the last of her beer. And then she burps softly.

ooOoo

We have plane tickets to New York for tomorrow morning. Carina is in a room down the hall. Mary is in a room in a hotel nearby. We spent the day telling war stories and walking around the town. After dinner, we went back to the beach, watched the sunset. Frost seems to be doing better.

I am now in my room alone. I sit down and try to catch up to myself. To all that has happened. An unlikely day.

I look at the violin in its open case on the bed. I take it out and check the tuning. Then I check the bow, tighten it and freshen the rosin. I put the violin in place under my chin and take a deep breath. The city is dark outside my window, dotted here and there with colored lights. Looking out at it, I begin the Minuet of Schnittke's _In the Old Style._

The piece was written for piano and violin, but I always have loved the violin part and thought it lovely, although it is better when accompanied. I find that my fingering is still good, reasonably quick, accurate. But my bowing is rusty, slow, screeching. I work at it for a minute and then I stop and take a breath. I exhale - and a memory wafts into my mind like the breeze from the window into my room, the memory uniting my divided mind, the breeze cooling the heated room

I remember Chuck's vows at the wedding. I realize he repeated them to me, in effect, on the beach. I move my fingers on the neck of the violin, gently touching the strings, and I stroke the strings with the bow.

The sound is imperfect; it needs work, practice. I feel tears run warm down my cheeks as I play. It is coming back to me. I have miles to go, but it is music.

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time for Chapter 58, "Forgiveness and Forgetfulness".


	58. Hollow Woman? (Four)

**A/N1** Welcome back.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

 _Hollow Woman? (Part Four):_

 _Forgiveness and Forgetfulness_

* * *

Workin' in the coal mine  
Goin' on down, down  
Workin' in a coal mine  
Oops, about to slip down

Workin' in a coal mine  
Goin' on down, down  
Workin' in a coal mine  
Oops, about to slip down

Five o'clock in the mornin'  
I'm already up and gone

Lord, I'm so tired  
How long can this go on?

Workin' in the coal mine  
Goin' on down, down  
Workin' in a coal mine  
Oops, about to slip down

Workin' in a coal mine  
Goin' on down, down  
Workin' in a coal mine  
Oops, about to slip down

\- Devo, _Workin' in a Coal Mine*_

* * *

Sarah slept and dreamt. Her dreams were of Chuck.

She was standing just inside the entrance to the Buy More. Chuck was at the Nerd Herd desk.

A small woman, brunette, perky, was standing in front of him. She was holding out a flip phone. Chuck smiled and took it, started tinkering with it. When he finished, he held it flat in one hand and used the other to flip it open, facing away from him. He extended it toward the woman - now a different small brunette, long-haired, wearing glasses - and Sarah could see that there was a ring, an engagement ring, inside. The woman - now yet a different small brunette, not as perky, no glasses, but obviously and hopelessly in love with Chuck. She gasped and reached for the ring. As she did, a man beside Sarah, tall, dark-haired, soullessly handsome - Sarah had taken him for a mannequin until he moved - offered Sarah a gun, not her silver one but a dark one. She grabbed it, aimed carefully...and shot Chuck.

Sarah woke, gasping.

She was terrified and…jealous and…pissed off. Those women! Chuck was _a married man_ and Sarah - she glanced down at her left hand - did _not_ have the rings to prove it. Not on her hand. But she did have them. She had put them in the interior pocket of her suitcase, dropping the small leather bag there, just before closing her suitcase to head to Langley.

Sarah made herself get out of bed. It was still dark outside, 5 am, and it was several hours before she and Frost and Carina were due to fly to New York. Sarah clicked on the desk lamp.

Chuck's file was still there, alongside her phone. She sat down in the desk chair and pulled the file to her. A picture of Chuck was paperclipped to the outside. Looking at it made her sad and lonely…and it pissed her off again.

Those women!

She did not remember their names or any details, but she did remember _them_. She was certain they were not simply creatures of her imagination, her dream. She knew she had found them threatening not just in the dream but in real life, even though the specifics eluded her. But then a thought came to her. Beyond being attractive, each of those women had the allure of normalcy. That was why they had threatened Sarah so much.

The mannequin man - _Shaw:_ the name came to her accompanied by stabbing regret and deep anger, but not much else, except the knowledge that he was a spy - had threatened Chuck (where Sarah was concerned) with the allure of spying. Sarah was not sure how, but she knew that she and Chuck had each labored each under a misapprehension: Chuck that he would have to be a spy of the CIA sort to have her, and Sarah that she would have to be a normal woman of the brunettes' sort to have him.

That had been a misapprehension. Whoever Sarah Bartowski was - and Sarah, Sarah Blank, was slowly beginning to become familiar with her - she was not a normal girl. But she was not a spy of Agent Walker's sort either. That much was obvious to Sarah. Somehow, she and Chuck had reworked 'spy' and 'normal' so as to be together.

Together.

 _Why did I run on the beach? After the stories, after that kiss?_

 _Yes, he knew me as I did not know him. But was it really the asymmetry? Or was it more like the kiss in front of the bomb? When he kissed me on the beach, I still believed I was Agent Walker, nothing but a spy. The stories put pressure on that belief, but I was so caught up in them, and in him telling them, that I didn't notice. It wasn't until the kiss that I felt the pressure for what it was, knew deep down that I was not Agent Walker._

 _I knew it because I knew how much I loved him, and how much he loved me, even if I did not know him. I knew Agent Walker could not have survived a transformation so complete, the transformation necessary for me to love like that - and to be loved like that._

 _Chuck saw Sarah Bartowski in Sarah Walker somehow. I just need to find her - keep finding her - in Sarah Blank._

Sarah started reading the file. She became engrossed but as a woman, not an agent. Frost had told her the day before that she had a chance to rediscover her husband, and the file continued that rediscovery, adding to her mission log and to Chuck's stories on the beach.

She saw his amazing record in high school, read glowing ('gifted', 'a truly lucid receptivity') but concerned reports from guidance counselors ('abandoned', 'lonely', 'tends to create his own world') and a couple of therapists. (The CIA was thorough, as usual.)

The therapists addressed his struggles to cope with the loss of his mother, then his dad, his deep love and respect for his sister. One thing that stood out was that everyone who got to know Chuck Bartowski liked him and admired him. The phrase 'remarkable potential' was like a chorus in all the early files. The only dark spots were a few comments about his tendency to self-doubt and second-guessing, his inability to accept his own gifts.

His academic record at Stanford was spotless until the cheating scandal. There were letters of recommendation from various professors for various things, scholarships, honor societies, and so on. They were uniformly strong: 'Brilliant', 'intuitive grasp of deep principles', 'capacious memory' (Sarah laughed bitterly at herself), 'a natural, effortless leader'.

But the cheating scandal was a dark turn. There was a letter of censure, a letter from the school's disciplinary board (detailing testimony given by Bryce Larkin), a letter of complaint from Professor Fleming, a letter of expulsion from the Dean. Reading them made Sarah's stomach ache.

His Buy More files were a monument to stalled potential.

Big Mike had hired Chuck expecting him to move up the ladder quickly, but Chuck had never so much as mounted the ladder. He had moved up, as Big Mike noted, at least in one sense: the other employees respected him (sometimes begrudgingly), and he had become the _de facto_ assistant manager. But he would not make any move to leave the Nerd Herd, to officially become more.

She stopped reading there. It was enough. She had read about things from there on in Beckman's files, seen her mission logs.

The whole experience of reading the file had been strange.

At first, she had felt vaguely guilty, until she realized that if Chuck had been there he would have been happy for her to read the file, would have encouraged her. She was sure of that. But after that feeling of vague guilt passed, she found it disconcerting that none of the many good said about Chuck was news to her, none remotely surprising, even if she could not always explain why. Some of it she had come to know during the time they hunted Quinn together. But not all. She did know him, maybe, perhaps, after all...

She realized that her disbelief that they were married had never been because she could not see herself with Chuck. That, in fact, never crossed her mind. As soon as she understood that he was not her mark, but in fact her husband, she had never once wondered - _how could I have fallen in love with_ this guy?

She had wondered how she could have come to love anyone - but that had been a question that called _herself_ into question, _not_ Chuck. She had found him attractive from the moment she showed up at their apartment, even when she thought he was her mark. She was willing to bet she had found him attractive from the first. Certainly, her brief memory of their first date had been suffused by attraction; she had found him loveable immediately, even if she had not used _that_ word. And then she heard her own voice, a confession from that same evening, that date: "I like you, Chuck."

 _God, had she said that to him that early, and sincerely?_

Yes, yes, she had. She had fallen at the very beginning.

Her mission log did not show it, of course, because she did not - no, she would not - admit it. She fought it for 563 days, knowing it and denying it. She had little memory of those days, but she knew they must have been hard, as all the battlements of Agent Walker were overcome.

Sarah had no idea how Chuck had done it, fought her for her own sake, but fought her as he had fought her in the 'dream house', where he fought her by taking a beating and by not fighting back, coming back for more. She suspected he had done the same emotionally during those early days. Taken a beating and not fought back, come back for more. He had the rarest kind of courage - not just the courage to win, but the courage to lose repeatedly without losing heart.

She must have made him believe he had lost her over and over again. The mission logs certainly suggested that she had: she watched herself yo-yo in them, fighting to master her feelings, even though she had mostly tried to hide it from the camera.

She knew how crisscross she had been emotionally, how endless the mazeways and labyrinths surrounding Agent Walker's walled-off, ragbag heart. She knew because she had perspective on Agent Walker now, being no longer her. She understood what she was and had been as she could not do when she was Agent Walker.

That was part of why she ran: she believed there on the beach, after that life-affirming kiss, that she _had to be_ and _could not be_ Agent Walker all at once. That was what dizzied her most, not the asymmetry in knowledge between her and Chuck. She just had not been able to understand it there, then.

The talk with Frost had changed things for Sarah - yet another important beach conversation.

 _Why did I keep Enforcing for Graham, stay an agent after the immediate threat to Dad ended?_

Because staying the Enforcer was what I did to punish myself for having been the Enforcer. _Self-punishment._ She had started it as a girl, trying somehow to atone for what she had done with her dad - but she had kept conning with him even as she punished herself for doing it. But it had gotten so much worse with Graham.

Leipzig. Sebastian and Christiana. After that mission, Sarah had given up the violin as self-punishment.

That set the pattern. Her Red Test sealed her fate, dyed her, she thought, all-day, permanent red. Blood. More blood. Each new deed punishment for past deeds, but itself a deed requiring punishment. And so she kept at it, trying to wash the dried blood from her hands with fresh blood. _Hopeless_. _Worse than hopeless._ Sort of like that Bible character (Sunday school again, all those years ago), Pontius Pilate, washing her hands of the blood she had shed before with blood she had just shed.

That the blood she shed was not innocent, was guilty - that did not keep her from being damaged, lacerated and horrified by the work of her hands. She tried to atone for her deeds by committing deeds for which she needed to atone.

 _Atonement as entombment._

Graham had known that she would do this: he must have been seen it coming, probably on his own but also confirmed by the CIA psychiatrists. Hell, her seduction instructor had seen it coming.

Graham had set it all into motion, wound her up, and then watched her wound herself, entomb herself in Langley, trap herself in a fly-bottle life.

All the self-denial, the self-disbelief, all punishment. _Crime and self-punishment._

She had displaced the agency of the punishment onto the universe, told herself it was out to get her. But, no: Sarah had been out to get Sarah.

Sarah vs. Sarah.

Frost was right. Spying was no life for a human being. It was ruination. That's what Le Carré's character, Leamas, meant in _The Spy Who Came in From the Cold_ when he described the sorts of people who wanted to be spies. Leamas' point? They were people already broken, ruined. Like she had been broken, ruined, by her Dad, and Graham had seen the dark promise in her ruin. _When did I read that novel?_ She shook her head.

Or - she had been ruined until the baby, and then Chuck…she had watched herself rebuild and be rebuilt in her mission logs, especially the ones after she and Chuck returned from Paris, after Shaw.

Just as Frost needed to forgive herself, Sarah Blank needed to forgive herself for Agent Walker. She suspected that Sarah Bartowski had been launched on that project and had made real progress. When Sarah had gotten to Langley, she did not want it. When she had been tempted to blame the universe her first night in Sayulita, she had felt herself rebel against it. She did not want to lose what she had with Chuck (she was not sure _exactly_ what it was, but she knew it was good, that she was good with him) to punish herself for having been Agent Walker.

Sarah closed Chuck's file. It had been open in front of her as she reflected.

She realized it was light outside, the darkness chased away by the sun's rising. She stood, stretched herself, then started to pack to head to NYC, to go and help Carina - and Bruce.

She was pulling her suitcase with one hand, holding her violin case with the other as she left the hotel.

ooOoo

Sarah was prone beside a prone Carina, atop a building in DC. It was dark. They were above much of the noise of the city. It was quiet. Strangely quiet.

They each had a pair of binoculars and they had a powerful, directional microphone, Each had in an earbud to listen to what the microphone picked up, communicate with each other if they separated.

Across the narrow street between the two buildings was the apartment of Carina's ex-husband, Bruce. Bruce Jones. _Really._

Sarah had her binoculars against her eyes. The lights had just gone on in Bruce's apartment. He was in the main room. An attractive dark-haired woman was in the room with him, her back to the window. _Sheila_. She heard Carina spit the name out under her breath, but she had told it to Sarah and Frost earlier.

Frost was in the stairwell leading to the rooftop; she had their backs. She had an earbud too.

Sheila reached out and touched Bruce's arm. Sarah looked at Bruce. Tall. Attractive, but in a guy-next-door-way. _Cute-ish_ , that seemed the right word. He had a nice smile, easy and kind. He flashed it at the woman.

He stepped past her and she followed him. Sarah could not see her face. Bruce walked past a chair and the woman sat down in it. The chair faced away from the window, so again, Sarah could not see her face. Carina clicked on the mic. Bruce was speaking, telling Sheila he was going to have to go out for a little while; he had left his briefcase at work in his hurry to meet her for dinner.

Carina huffed. "He is always...was always so absent-minded…"

Sheila responded, her voice low and breathy. She told him to go. She'd get changed for bed and watch some television, but she would be awake when he returned. He apologized again and left the apartment.

Sheila did not get out of the chair. But she fished around in her purse and produced her phone. She sent a text. Then she put the phone down. After a moment, she picked it back up, presumably reading the reply. She got up and left the room, her face still unseen by Sarah.

More time passed. The mic picked up what sounded like running water, a shower. Then Sheila came back into the main room, back into view. She was wearing a lacy blue negligee, with a silky robe over it of the same color. Sheila had a towel over her head, drying her hair. The mic picked up the sound of knocking.

"The contact?" Sarah asked. Carina had told her the plan. A male buddy of Carina's was going to meet Sheila, claiming to be from another potential drug-laundering 'customer'. Contact had been established a few days ago, but this was to be the first face-to.. _._ well, _lingerie_ meeting.

Carina nodded. "That should be him. He's good; you'll see."

Sheila turned and finished toweling her hair. Holding the towel in one hand, she opened the door. A tall man, curly-headed, dressed in a black leather jacket…

 _Chuck!_

"Oh, no, Carina…." Sarah hissed, her stomach knotting, her blood icy, her face hot, "tell me you _didn't_ …"

Carina smirked at Sarah, shrugging as much as she could in her current posture. "Not like he had anything else to do…"

Sarah put her binoculars back up. The door was closed. Chuck was standing, talking to Sheila, keeping his eyes steadily on her face.

"So, here I am." Chuck's voice, nervous (Sarah knew his nervous voice well.)

"Yes, here you are," Sheila's voice, breathy and low, suggestive. "I hope you don't mind...I was...getting _ready_ for bed…"

"Goddamn whore," Carina muttered through clenched teeth. "I should have known she was up to something all those years ago. I should never have run, forfeited my husband. Working her way to the top from the bottom." Carina's anger was palpable in the dark, radiating off her.

Chuck again: "Um...no, that's okay...Sheila. But we need to talk about my employer and her...hopes…"

Sheila put out her hand and rubbed Chuck's arm, oh-so-slowly. Sarah winced, squeezing her binoculars, half expecting to crush them in her hands. The pissed-off feeling from the morning, from her dream, was back, and she was in full nuclear meltdown.

"I think we can talk more...more profitably...after we... _clear our heads_." Sarah saw Sheila drop the towel, then shoulder the robe off her, revealing so much of her beautiful tan skin. She reached around Chuck, pressing her front against his, and clicked off the light. The microphone picked up a muffled moan…

Sarah was up in a shot, sprinting. She slammed back the stairwell door and bulleted past an astonished Frost. "Sarah?!" Sarah did not answer. She traveled down the steps in great leaps, soaring from one landing to the next, catching herself, before quickly gathering herself, and, gymnast-like, springing into the air again.

She had a gun under her light jacket. She was going to put a _stop_ to whatever was going on in that apartment.

That was her husband, her guy, and he was in danger...various dangers. _Goddamn Carina and her recklessness_. She could have used anyone. Why Chuck?

Faces flashed in Sarah's mind as she descended. Sasha Banacheck, Lou, Jill, Hannah, Sophia Stepanova.

Now this _Sheila_ woman.

ooOoo

 _No, no, hell no. None of them took him from me. She won't. He chose me! He always chooses me! I always choose him! I always will!_

I roar out of the building and across the narrow street. I know Bruce's apartment number. A woman buzzes herself into the building and I squeeze through the door behind her. We arrive at the elevator at the same time.

She is elderly, pulling her groceries in a tall cart. She smiles at me. I smile back but I can feel the skin on my face stretch. The smile is not genuine. It is all I can do to keep from screaming at the elevator to hurry. It finally arrives. I almost leap on. It takes the woman a moment. She spills a couple of oranges from a bag as she pulls her cart into the elevator. I bend over and grab them after I push the number of Bruce's floor. I hand them to the woman.

"Are you okay, young lady?"

I nod.

"But you seem upset. Is it…" she leans toward me and whispers, "...a matter of the heart?"

 _Yes, yes, yes: with Chuck, for me, it is always a matter of the heart. Forget my damn head._ I nod again.

"Well, don't worry. I am sure there is no man whose heart would forget you."

I have no time to consider her words. The door opens and I race out of the elevator. When the door closes and the woman cannot see, I grab my gun and sprint to Bruce's door. I stop, making my panting stop for a moment. I hear sounds from inside, like furniture moving. _No!_

 _Chuck!_

I kick open the door. The lights are on. Chuck is standing there, looking at me. I realize he is wearing the same jacket he wore when he pretended to be Rafe Gruber. The realization brings with it another stab of regret.

I turn and look at Sheila. She is standing next to Chuck, her robe back on, closed and tied. She has just finished turning the chair she had been seated in.

Sheila is Zondra. Grinning Zondra. "Been expecting you, Bartowski…"

In my ear, I hear Carina chuckle. "You can thank me later."

And at that moment, I remember that I have remembered.

I stow my gun, take aim at Chuck, run and leap into his arms. We crash together onto the floor, lip-locked. I will work out punishment for Carina and Zondra later. _I have a long memory._ It is time for my reward.

I am no longer Sarah _Blank_. The blank has been filled in. Zondra said it - _Bartowski_.

* * *

 **A/N2** I wanted this final story to be one that could plausibly have been housed in a couple of episodes of _Chuck,_ a two-part reply to the finale _._ We aren't done yet, two chapters to go. Still some things to explain, loose ends to tidy. Happiness to enjoy.

I did not want to string out the sadness here. Our heroine has had enough of that (as, I am sure, have my readers. As have I.) Some sadness was unavoidable unless the story was that the kiss worked as Morgan (and Chuck and Sarah) hoped. But I wanted Sarah to work through the sadness, not wallow in it - work through it with help from her family and friends.

See you next time. Thanks for reading. Comments?

Zettel

*This particular Devo song had been intended for _New Traditionalists_ but Warner Bros. (ahem!) would not allow it. The band was then approached by the filmmakers of _Heavy Metal_ and the band gave them the song for the soundtrack. It became the only hit off that soundtrack, and then of course Warner Bros. issued special pressings of the song and put it on later issues of the album.


	59. Hollow Woman? (Five)

**A/N1** Here we are, almost at the end of the story. The _Bells_ story was ending 1a to MisEd. This chapter and the next are ending 1b.

Don't own _Chuck_.

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

 _Hollow Woman? (Part Five):_

 _Recollecting_

I know the date,  
I know the place where it happened  
Yet in my mind, the scene I recall is imagined  
As we grow old I'm sure  
There will be moments that we will not forget

But I would  
Remember something of the moment that we met

\- Billy Bragg, _The Fourteenth of February_

* * *

I was lost. Now I am found.

My husband is beneath me, kissing me to within an inch of my life. I am eagerly returning the favor.

I hear Zondra clear her throat, then I hear voices - not Zondra's.

Ellie's voice. _Ellie?_ Then I hear confirmation, not her voice again but one unmistakable.

" _Awesome!_ " Devon.

I pull back, releasing Chuck from the kiss, my eyes still near his brown ones. "Other women in lingerie are strictly forbidden, Chuck. It is in the fine print of our prenup. Right after the line about never using the word 'divorce'..."

And then he knows: it's me. He knows for sure.

I hear Ellie start to squeal; then Devon shushes her. "Clara, Ellie!"

I finally roll of Chuck and, sitting on the ground beside him, take his hand and look up. Devon is holding Clara. She is asleep on his shoulder. (She must be used to Devon's _awesomes_.) Ellie is beside them, looking at me, her face split by a wall to wall smile, radiant.

They step aside and make room. Morgan comes in, and then Alex. They see us together and smile too. Morgan gives me a thumbs up and a look of kind fellow-feeling; he had lived through his own version of the Intersected nightmare. I can feel the joy in the room, the excitement for me, for Chuck. But no one seems to want to press me, pressure me. They will let me take this at my own pace. I get up and cross the distance to Morgan. I pull him into a hug. When I pull back, he is wearing a pleased but surprised smile.

"The kiss, it worked, Morgan. Thank you." Morgan now looks positively lost.

"But Chuck said it didn't work, that you left. Um...ran...in fact."

I lower my eyes. "Yes, I did, but because it worked, just not as you thought. Chuck kissed me and I knew I loved him and knew he loved me, not just in my head, but in my heart. But at that moment, I had no idea how to handle that, to understand how it had happened or how I could have done what I did after Quinn...to the man I loved…"

Morgan reached out and took my hand. Alex gave me a concerned look. "Sarah," Morgan offered, "no one blames you for that - except you, evidently. And you shouldn't. None of us believe you would have followed through with any of it. Your heart would have controlled your head. I believe it."

Sarah looked back up. "Well, if you believe it, then I will too."

Chuck had joined us. "I believe it."

I turned to face my husband and took his hand. "But, Chuck, why did you let me go?"

He opened his mouth to speak when Carina and Frost entered the apartment. I grip Chuck's hand and drag him toward them. He seems reluctant. I realize that Zondra has joined the four of us. Frost looks around the room, her smile masking bewilderment. She looked at Carina and narrowed her eyes. Before she could speak, I did.

"Carina, what the _hell_?"

Carina and Chuck shared a look. "I told you, Carina."

Carina huffed. The door opened yet again and...Bruce walked in. Carina had turned and he walked to her, sweeping her into his arms and kissing her. He broke the kiss off - she still seemed lost in it - and turned to me, extending his hand. "You must be Sarah Bartowski."

I am thrown by the situation. I suddenly know the people around me. I don't just know _about them._ I _know_ them. Memories of each are available to me. It's like I had been in the dark and then someone hit the lights, and now I am blinking, blinded. I know these people.

Except I am not sure I know Carina.

She is holding Bruce's hand, smiling and gazing at him. I notice the smile on Chuck's face as he looked at them. "Yes," Chuck said as he intercepted Bruce's hand, "she is Sarah Bartowski." He grinned at me, saving me.

I nodded, catching up. "Okay," I conceded, " _please_ tell me what is going on. My head is...a little jumbled." I felt Chuck slip his arm around me and I sidestepped into him, steadied by the contact.

Bruce begins, checking with Carina by a glance and she gives him a fond, permissive look. _Odd._

"The...um…'sting' tonight was one that we - Carina and I - have already been part of. A few months ago"

Carina then breaks in, unable to restrain herself. "That woman, Sheila, was involved with money laundering. She used Bruce to get access to the right people in the firm and to...advance. She had been slowly setting up her exit strategy, a way to get out and to leave Bruce holding the bag. Bruce began to worry and he got in touch with me. It seems he had kept tabs on me, too." She gives Bruce a sweet smile. _Sweet? Carina?_

"I was worried that the DEA would think I was compromised, so I got in touch with Zondra and she came and gave me a hand. Zondra had a friend who played the...um...Chuck part. We were able to get Sheila to incriminate herself - and of course, once she was arrested, she rolled on the other people in the firm. We were able to clear Bruce's name. Big win for me, the DEA, after I brought them in." Bruce leans down and kisses Carina's cheek, a gesture of affection and thanks. She gives him that smile again.

I shake my head. "So, the blush in Mexico, the anger tonight…"

"Not really acting, just true reactions in the wrong context. But it added to believability, right?" Carina is proud of herself.

I nod, speechless. "And your new role at the DEA?"

Carina blushes again, here. "That's true, more or less. I wanted to stop the deep cover and constant danger. Stay near New York…Near Bruce."

I finally give in to the smile that has been threatening my face since Carina smiled. "And you and Bruce are _what_?"

Carina seems stymied, shy. _Carina? Shy?_ Bruce answered. "Together. Dating. We're taking it slow, seeing what happens."

Carina nods, her blush intensifying. I realize the blush is not just embarrassment - it is happiness. I can see it clearly: Carina is in love. _Maybe she always has been?_ I did not know what to say to my own question. She is a mystery, Carina is.

"But how did you set all this up?"

"I called Chuck after your violin came back from the shop, to see about visiting. He told me what happened. You had just left. I told Chuck I had an idea; it just hit me. I told him to get the family to NYC. Then I called Zondra, who was in DC, not in deep cover. She, of course, agreed to help. Mary," Carina said, turning to her, "was not in on it. I hadn't planned on a role for her and it was best for her to play the one she volunteered for. I did tell her, just before we went upstairs next door, not to stop you if you ran from the ceiling. Carina grinned and Frost did too. "Luckily, she trusted me."

"And Ellie and Devon and Clara. Where were they during your charade?"

Bruce: "In my neighbor's apartment. He's a nice guy, a professor with a soft spot for spy stories. He has no idea he actually lived through a brief one, sort of…"

I shake my head again. It is all so strange. All these people who had felt, to some degree, like strangers when I first saw them after Quinn's manipulation of me, now feel like _mine._ My friends, my family. I am not alone in the world. Maybe at some level, I did know that all along. Maybe that explains my hesitancies, my omissions when I thought I was Agent Walker.

I feel like I have just awakened from a long bad dream and found all my loved ones safe and sound. Me too.

"We have rooms reserved for all of you at a hotel nearby," Bruce added. "A room for the Woodcombe's, with a bed for the little one. One for Morgan and Alex, one for Mary, and one for you and Chuck."

I narrow my eyes at Carina. "One room?"

She laughs. "Yes, and one bed."

"Pretty sure of yourself, weren't you, Miller?"

Carina narrows her eyes at me in mockery, then she laughs again. "No, Bartowski, I was sure of _you_."

After that, Chuck and Morgan and Bruce begin to talk to each other. Alex and Mary begin to talk to each other too.

Zondra slips out to slip into something less comfortable - or, more comfortable, considering the situation.

I take Carina by the elbow, and drop my voice. "Really, Carina, how did you know that would work?"

She shrugs. "I know you. You take yourself to be a mystery, and maybe in some ways you are, but mostly to yourself, - but the people who...care...about you know who you really are.

"And remember, I was on the receiving end of your jealousy once, and that was over Bryce. You felt something for Bryce, but what you feel for that big goof of yours is not only different in degree from what you felt for Bryce, it is different in kind.

"I was sure you would not be able to watch him be... _imperiled._ The main thing was making sure that you didn't have your gun out when it went down and that the lights went out before you could manage a shot." Carina smirked at me. Ellie had walked to us and she had listened to what Carina said.

"Bryce. She doesn't mean Bryce...Larkin?" I give Ellie an uncomfortable shrug. She responds: "Okay, I get it. Another story for a sunny day with umbrella drinks?" I remember my own words ( _I remember!_ ) and I nod, a promise.

I am planning on telling Ellie a lot of things. My sister.

"So, is that all you need to know?" Carina is looking at Bruce as she asks.

"Yeah, for now. But…"

"I know, I know...payback is a _bitch._ "

Zondra is now with us. She's in street clothes. I give her a look.

"Hey, I owed you one for that _legs_ comment after the CATs bachelorette party. We could ask Chuck whose legs are better…" She tosses her hair and smiles saucily at me.

Then she changes expression and moves closer, lowering her voice. "He never touched me. In fact, his eyes never left mine, Sarah. A perfect gentleman. But I also think he may have been worried that you would shoot him." Her dark eyes twinkle. "I know the plan made him nervous." We laugh together. "And that moan in the dark. Just me, pretending. Other than rubbing his arm and leaning into him, I kept my hands off your man. But he is a cutey. And a good man, Sarah, a really good man. You are a lucky woman."

I whisper my thanks. I cross to Chuck, interrupting his conversation, and I drag him into the hallway, shutting the door. I grab him and kiss him with so much force we bang into the wall. When the kiss ends, I lean my forehead against his and face him, eye-to-eye.

"So, why did you let me go?"

"Remember your rule about thirty minutes of silence before sleep?"

I nod. "Yes...I do."

"I thought I would give you thirty minutes, so to speak. Besides, you never disabled the locator on your phone..."

I smile. "No, I didn't. I guess I never really left you, did I?"

Chuck shrugs sheepishly. "You came back to the apartment before you went after Quinn. You came back to the Buy More later. I guess I had faith...that you'd come back again. I think you kinda like me...You weren't the only one who felt that kiss on the beach." He looks at me, his eyes all lit up, half love, half laughter.

"And you went along with Carina's plan, mister?"

I hear and feel him gulp. "Yes, but I only did it because I wanted you back so bad and because Carina...well, she convinced me that it would work." I kiss him again softly.

"You are forgiven. But I give you notice. I ever witness another scene like that, I shoot first and forgive second." He nods, a mixture of real and mock sobriety. I kiss him yet again. I can't stop it, really. My husband. My Chuck. My guy.

Always my heart's choice.

ooOoo

We spend two more days in New York, celebrating. The next day, Ellie takes me to a hospital lab to run some checks. Everything is fine; the Intersect damage does not seem extensive and I feel fine. I have had no problems remembering. That night, there is a large, riotous dinner with the entire group, including Bruce.

Later, at the hotel, after Devon puts Clara down, Frost gathers the family in her room and she tells the Volkoff story to us all. We weep together. But the storm of tears passes and is replaced by the hugs all around. Something changes for us all that night: we begin to put away secrets and to reckon with the past. We do it together. Frost seems lighter, if also a bit dazed by herself and by the immediate embrace of her children. She comes to me and hugs me, thanking me for saving her - again.

Another revelation that night: Chuck tells everyone that he has the Intersect again. Frost, surprisingly, brightens when we gasp. It turns out she knows of another cache of Stephen's inventions, in a storage facility back in LA. There is another suppression device there, like the one she used on Chuck in the basement of their old house.

When we get to LA, the first thing we do is go to the storage facility. Frost remembered correctly. There is a suppression device there. There is so much there. Chuck is giddy. Inventions of his dad's line the shelves. Files. Chuck gets lost in it all, but Frost and I force him to focus on the suppression device. Chuck studies it eagerly for a bit, then he looks at me. I smile and nod. It is time for the Intersect to go. He uses the device, blinks, and then smiles and nods at me. The Intersect is suppressed. We can go on without it.

Over the next weeks, we begin work on Carmichael Enterprises. We find an office. We get set up.

I call Boosinger and officially resign from the CIA. I collect all my leave pay.

ooOoo

I feel no sadness about leaving, no regret. That spy world is a world well lost.

I do not know if I am still a spy, or if Chuck is. But I am not a CIA spy anymore; he never was. And frankly, I never cared about the word. I can keep it or lose it, no matter. I am Chuck's partner - and so much more, friend, lover, _wife_. The other terms can shift for themselves.

The business gets off to a good start. We suspect both Beckman and Boosinger are sending business our way. Mary helps out at the beginning. After a couple of weeks, we hire Alex to run the business. This makes Morgan very happy, if distracted. We make sure that we keep one office open for Casey, should he come back.

ooOoo

Mary resigns from the CIA a few weeks after me. Boosinger has a lead on a civilian job for her, one that will keep her in LA. Mary and I have lunch a couple of times a week. We understand each other.

Chuck has been spending some of his free time among the cache of Stephen's gadgets. He is sure that some of them are still cutting edge, and that, with a bit of tinkering, they can be patented and sold for a lot of money. Stephen left a legacy after all.

ooOoo

Speaking of money, Hartley's money remains tied up. Beckman has been working on it.

We may get some of it back someday, but she can make no promises. That's okay. I have a feeling we are going to be just fine, financially. We can't buy the dream house just yet, but I am happy where I am. The house is something to look forward to.

ooOoo

My mom and Molly are now a constant feature of our lives. We see them all the time. I not only have a sister in Ellie, but I also have one in Molly, and Chuck and I get to be a part of her childhood. Mom is good; she and I are good. Mom and Mary hit it off right away, and it has been good for Mary to find a friend with no real ties to the spy world. It's been good for Mom to find a friend who can help her understand my past, my life.

Carina is still dating Bruce. I have no idea whether she will re-marry him. She long ago told me she had vowed to take no more vows. But would re-taking previous vows be a violation of that? They've been here to visit once and we hope they will come back soon. Carina seems happy in a way that I have never seen before. Relaxed, unforced, no longer restless. Nothing chasing her.

Zondra _is_ in deep cover again, now. She has become an agent Boosinger respects, and Zondra seems pleased about that. I worry about her, about the cost of the life for her. But that is her call, obviously. At least Boosinger has no Enforcer, and so has not offered that sort of job to Zondra.

ooOoo

Gail and Robert were just here with Jenny. She's getting to be so big, so beautiful. Seeing them was like a dream. Robert looks good and he is obviously still as in love with Gail as he was in his journal years ago. The four of us sat and talked for hours. I didn't explain, but neither of them was surprised to learn that Heather Chandler was now behind bars.

Old friends. I have _old friends_ too, older than the CATs. My present has contacted parts of my past I once thought irrevocably lost.

ooOoo

I sometimes wonder about my life. About how it could have been what it was and become what it now is. About how I could have managed to be so good at a job I bitterly hated. About how I could have kept that hatred from myself - partially, anyway - for a decade. About how I could fall so desperately in love with a man like Chuck and keep that love from myself - partially, anyway - for almost two years.

The only answer I have, I guess, is that I learned to hide things, including myself, that I learned to hide from myself. The hiding never exactly succeeded. It is hard to hide when the person searching for you is you. That's true even for a spy because while a spy is good at hiding, she is also good at finding.

Hidden then found.

I am done with hiding. It will take time to come out of hiding completely, even with Chuck. But I am getting closer - closer with Ellie too, and Frost. My life is no longer a closed feat of empty self-possession. It is open, shared.

My life feels real. It is real.

A real life. My life. I remember it all now (as much as anyone remembers all of his or her life), although there are parts I would like to forget. Now, though, instead of living in a present that is all about avoiding the past, I live in a present facing the future. My real life.

And I know how I want it to begin.

* * *

 **A/N2** One more chapter to go. I am posting it today, so it should be up soon if it's not up already.

Z


	60. Hollow Woman? (Six)

**A/N1** One last time, folks. Cue the music.

I am posting both 59 and 60 today, so if you haven't read 59, you should do so before you read this chapter.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

CHAPTER SIXTY

 _Hollow Woman? (Part Six)_

 _Burial, Rebirth_

* * *

Part One: Burial

* * *

At your own burial  
Don't forget to cry  
At your own burial  
At your own burial

Don't forget to cry  
At your own burial

\- Miike Snow, _Burial_

* * *

 _Some months later_

* * *

 **From:** Chuck Bartowski

 **To:** Ellie Woodcombe

 **Re:** Answers

Hey, Sis!

I hope you and Captain Awesome and the Awesomette are all great. Love you all! We're hoping to get to Chicago to see you soon. Sarah's morning sickness is getting better.

We got the care package. The baby clothes were _darling_. (Sarah's word.) The book was great! Sarah's loved it. I had never heard of it. _How to Avoid Surprises When You Are Expecting._ Ha!

Sarah's read it cover-to-cover twice. Speaking of my beautiful wife, she has given me permission to answer your question, but only on pain of death, should you reveal the answer. (Just kidding.)

( _Not just kidding._ -Sarah) ( _Ok, just kidding. -_ Sarah, again.)

(Sorry, pregnant hormonal former spy redacting my email! _Ouch!_ )

( _He'll live_. -Sarah)

You asked how Sarah got pregnant. Since you are a doctor, I assume you don't mean _how,_ really, but _what were the circumstances._ So, here's the story. (Sarah's sleepy, so she's going to nap. She said she trusts me to tell this right. But she'll probably check it.)

A few weeks after NYC, Sarah told me we had something to do. That made me...nervous, but she didn't explain. (She did smile that smile at me, so I wasn't too nervous.)

The following Saturday, we got up and drove to San Diego. We stopped at a diner on the way and had genius pancakes. So good!

We drove to a wooded area out near the San Diego suburbs. Sarah had put a suitcase in the car (yeah, okay, I admit, that made me a little more nervous) and a picnic basket and a blanket (yeah, that confused me). We got out of the car and Sarah handed me the picnic basket and the blanket; she took the suitcase.

She pulled the suitcase behind her. I couldn't tell where we were going but she seemed to know. We walked deep into the trees until we reached the spot Sarah was targeting. We stopped in a small clearing, next to a large tree. Sarah told me to spread the blanket but to leave the basket on it.

She opened her suitcase (the top faced me, so I could not see inside) and she took out a small collapsible shovel. Giving me a quick smile, she began to dig at the foot of the tree. I asked to help, but she shook her head. When she had the hole finished, she shoved the blade of the shovel into the ground and left it standing. She then reached into the suitcase again and retrieved a small stack of index cards and her CIA badge. She gave me a long, soft look and she turned back to the hole. She read the first card: 'Jenny Burton', and she dropped it in. The next, "Rebecca Franco'. Next, 'Rebecca Montague'.

I understood then. Each name was an alias, a con or a cover - a piece of her past, her real fake past.

She cycled through the names, her voice breaking on some. Finally, she had one final one in her hand: 'Sam'. I know Sarah's told you about some of her history, Ellie, and that she told you about those dark days after Prague, the days we spent apart. So, you will know why that name came last, and why we both stood there, silent and tearful for a moment.

Sarah reached out her hand to me and I stepped to her. She turned her blue eyes to me, red and watery, but she smiled beneath them.

She squeezed my hand, her touch and her gaze both so full of so many things.

You know how much my wonderful wife can say without words. She leaned into me and kissed me. Then she turned and leaned her back against me. She put the 'Sam' card in my hand.

"Throw it away, Chuck. It's not my real name. It hasn't been my real name since the first time I met you. I _am_ Sarah. _Sarah Bartowski_."

I dropped the card in. Sarah tossed her CIA badge in last. She let me cover them with dirt. Then together we stamped the dirt down. We crossed to the blanket and we ate lunch there among the trees. When we finished, we packed and rolled up the blanket. Sarah grabbed the handle of her suitcase and I hefted the picnic basket. She took my hand.

I gave her a puzzled look. "Are you okay, Sarah?"

"I'm good," she said. She kissed me again. "Let's go home. Today is the day _I_ am done with death. And today is the day _we_ start on life."

She gave me a smile and held my eyes. It took me a minute - and then I understood. I set a quick pace back to the car, Sarah laughing at me from behind.

And that's all I am going to tell you about that.

We're pretty sure Sarah got pregnant that day, or maybe the next, or the next. Right around that time.

I love her so much, El, so much, and the little Bartowski growing inside her.

Oh, to answer your other questions, Sarah's doctor says everything is great. She's healthy and the baby too. All good.

Mom's been checking in every day. It's nice to have her in town permanently, and nice to just have her...you know? She's happy. She told me she'll be coming to visit you soon.

Her new job agrees with her: technical advisor for a hit spy comedy tv show. (I still can't believe it.) She says she likes helping with spying for laughs. Her hours are largely her own. She and Sarah have spent a lot of time together; they seem to get each other and I think they are helping each other let go of some things.

Mom can tell you more about that when she sees you.

Oh (again!), I told Mom you and I talked and that this year, that we're canceling our 'Mother's' Day and celebrating her Mother's Day, the real one. That made her happy, El. Really happy. Good idea!

Love,

Chuck ( _and Sarah_ )

 _End of email_

 **Secured by** _ **Carmichael Enterprises**_.

* * *

I wake up from my nap to find Chuck sitting at the computer, reading the pregnancy book Ellie sent me. We'd both been studying it. I had been prepping since I got it, making lists.

I get up and walk to Chuck. I kiss the top of his head and read the rest of the email with my chin resting on his head.

He turns his head and looks up at me. I nod, reach down, and press _Enter_.

And then I drag him to our bed. I can always blame my hormones.

* * *

Part Two: Rebirth

* * *

I caught you sleeping here, all wrapped in wool  
I caught you sleeping here, almost broke my heart  
I found you dreaming  
I'm dreaming of you always

When I was just a child, a lonely boy  
I held onto my dreams, like they could run from me  
The hopes I harbored fled, as they often do  
But I still dreamed of you

My little dreamer, I'll always  
I'll always dream of you

\- Future Islands, _Little Dreamer_

* * *

 _Some more months later._

* * *

I have Stevie in a wrap, warm and snug against me. She is lolling, sleepy, drifting off.

We named her Stephanie, but that quickly got shortened - by Morgan and Alex (they've been babysitting, practicing for when Alex gets pregnant) - and I like it. So does Chuck.

I feel so relaxed, so warm and loved and...whole. I have on the light flannel blue nightgown Chuck bought me. It's comfortable. But Chuck seems to find it incredibly sexy. At least I know I have a hard time keeping it on me. Although I admit sometimes I am the one who initiates taking it off, as I did tonight.

Chuck is sleeping in the bed. I am in our rocking chair, a gift from Casey and Gertrude, made by hand in Germany. I have my feet up on the end of the bed and under the blankets, against Chuck's.

By my chair is a gift for Chuck. i-Jodi at _Pressing and Grinding_ found it for me.

Chuck has been working so hard at Carmichael Industries while I have stayed home to be with our daughter. I will go back to work soon, and while I look forward to it, I have not found being at home a hardship. Bonding with Stevie, reading, playing my violin (Stevie seems to like it), listening to music (I choose the classical, Chuck suggests the popular): all these things have been restful, restorative - especially Stevie.

She is alive; Chuck and I made her. I carried her and gave birth to her. I make her food in my body and feed her. All this is a complete miracle, and it seems to me redemptive. Frost and I have talked about forgiving ourselves, and Stevie is my self-forgiveness in growing and beautiful human form. I carried her - and gave birth to me, a new me. Another one. I just keep changing; I just keep loving. I am so full of love.

 _Stevie_. Her brown eyes and blond hair. I look at her and I see us, me and Chuck, the _us_ we fought so hard to have. The _us_ that was so worth having. The _us_ I will fight for too, Chuck, every day.

I bought a special issue of Devo's _Freedom of Choice_ for Chuck. That's the gift. It took i-Jodi a while to find it, but she came through. I need to ask Chuck to explain the flower pots the guys in the band are wearing on the cover. Maybe it has something to do with _Tron_? I glance at the movie poster on the wall. The record is a _thank you_ to Chuck for putting in such long days and for pitching in so enthusiastically at home.

Stevie coos and snuggles closer. Chuck laughs in his sleep, gently rubbing his feet against mine. I laugh softly in response to them both, careful not to disturb Stevie. I am curious about their dreams, Stevie's and Chuck's. I will have to remember to ask Chuck in the morning.

My eyelids are getting heavy. My heart is full.

I am a lucky woman. I have a life I feared to imagine with a man who is my gift. I open my eyes to look at him and down at Stevie once more. Chuck has given me so much. Earlier tonight, just after we made love, he held me against him tight and told me Stevie and I are his world, his whole world.

Every time he says that the words consume my heart.

I am a lucky woman.

I am good. I am good here.

I feel safe, sleepy. My feet are warm.

My eyes close.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow, to the future. To life, to my life.

But for now, a little sleep…

 _I love you, Stevie. I love you, Chuck. My family…_

* * *

End of _**Epilogue: Sarah vs. the Emptiness**_

* * *

The End

 **The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker**

* * *

Exit Music: Crowded House, _Private Universe_

* * *

 **A/N2** I've made (even) more mercenary use than usual of the songs that serve as epigraphs here, wanting only a small selection of their lyrics (the way that the show often used songs).

Tune in next time for...Oh, right. We're done. No next time.

So, that's that.

Thanks to David Carner and WvonB and Grayroc for pre-reading and encouragement. Without them, I would likely have abandoned this story. They kept me going.

Thanks to those who have reviewed the story or sent me messages about it.

Thanks in particular to Willie Gavin, Chesterton, RC1701, TianC, wilf21, Salish Sea, 2old2write, fezzywhigg, Crazzywally, jwatkins, anthropocene, greg6419,PeterOinNYC, The Truth is Out There, and charahkids.

I'd very much appreciate any final thoughts you might have. The story's been a lot of work. Neither angst nor sadness is my chosen meter but this story forced me through a ton of it. (And you, if you've made it this far.) But I believed when I started, and I still believe, that it was a story worth telling.

Good or bad, successful or not, I was always aiming not just at entertainment but at art. As I like to say, I write fan _fiction,_ not _fan_ fiction.

If you want stories in which you get what Henry James called "Clumsy life at her stupid work", I haven't been your writer. Look, unresisted waste and muddlement surround us all the time. I don't write (or read) to gain fresh exposure to what I am overexposed to in daily life and know only too well in myself. Speaking of James, I have written my characters here (and in all my stories) with an _operative irony_. If this is not how people are - doing their best to try to live lives that make some kind of sense, striving to be better - then it is how they should be. But I do know such people (although I do not know only such people). I think _Chuck_ presents us with such people, such characters. For me, the power of the show centers in its presentation of characters struggling to become better.

Although I don't plan to write here again, I will be around and happy to respond to reviews or to chat about this story, any of my others, or about the show - or about writing generally.

Never imagined when I posted the first chapter of CvBC that 18 months later I would have written 1.2 million words of fanfiction. I hope I've written a few words that mattered to you.

I've enjoyed writing here.

Best to all,

Zettel

* * *

"Love, if worth anything, seems to demand pain and strain in order to prove itself, and is not satisfied with an easy attainment. How indeed should one know the great heights except by the rocks and escarpments? And pain often in some strange way seems to be the measure of love — the measure by which we are assured that love is true and real; and so (which is one of the mysteries) it becomes transformed into a great joy." Edward Carpenter


End file.
